KOLKATA - Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former finance minister

Yashwant Sinha Saturday described the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme as a “bottomless pit” for looting money.

“It is neither creating assets, nor generating jobs. Money is being looted. Everyone is making money through the scheme,” Sinha said during a media interaction here.

Commenting on the budget for fiscal 2009-10 presented in parliament on Monday, he said the Congress was no more a reformist party.

“During the last five years, there was a drought of reforms as the government was burdened with the baggage of the Left. But even without the Left, the Congress has not walked the path of reforms.

“The Congress has now become more Left than the Left itself. This is not the same party we had seen in 1991,” he said, in a reference to the time when the Congress initiated the economic liberalization in the country.

Referring to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, regarded as the architect of the reforms as finance minister between 1991-96 under then prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, Sinha said: “This is not the same man who took decisive steps then.”

He also expressed doubts over the government meeting the budget target of four percent agricultural growth, saying it might not be achieved as the monsoon was likely to be inadequate.

He said the budget presented by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee did not have any broad vision for the next five years.