Arun Jaitley presents Narendra Modi govt`s last full Budget: Key takeaways

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday presented Union Budget 2018 in Lok Sabha. While there was no change in personal income tax slab, the Narendra Modi government did provide some relief to the salaried class by a standard exemption of Rs 40,000 in lieu of transport and medical expense.

Besides, the government also provided some major relief to the agriculture and rural sector by allocating Rs 14.34 trillion for rural infrastructure.

Here are the top takeaways of the last full budget of the Narendra Modi government:

# No change in personal Income Tax structure.

# Standard deduction of Rs 40,000 for salaried class in form of transport and medical expenditure.

# Deduction for senior citizens increased to Rs 50,000 for medical insurance.

# Deduction for senior citizens with critical illness raised to Rs 1 lakh.

# Allocation of Rs 14.34 trillion for rural infrastructure.

# Proposal to set up an agricultural market fund with corpus of Rs 2,000 crore.

# Allocation in food processing sector to be doubled from 750 crore last year to 1400 crore in 2018-19.

# Government to launch Operation Green for which a sum of Rs 500 crore will be allocated.

# State of art facility will be set up in 42 food parks for agri exports.

# Extension of Kisan credit card to fisheries and animal husbandry farmers

# Allocation of Rs 10,000 crore for fisheries & aquaculture, animal husbandry funds.

# Allocation of Rs 1,200 crore towards setting up health and wellness centres in India, which will provide comprehensive healthcare, maternal and child care, free drugs and diagnostics to the poor.

# National Health Protection Scheme announced, under which a sum of upto Rs 5,00,000 will be provided to 10 crore poor families in India per year, which is expected to reach around 50 crore beneficiaries, and will be used for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation.

# Sum of Rs 600 crore to be provided for nutritional support to tuberculosis patients at a rate of Rs 500 per month.

# 24 new government medical colleges and hospitals to be set up by upgrading existing district hospitals, thereby moving towards achieving universal health coverage.

# Contributions of women employees to Employees Provident Fund (EPF) will be brought down from existing 12 per cent to 8 per cent for the first three years of employment.

# Government to contribute 12 per cent of the wages as EPF in all sectors for the next three years.

# Allocation Rs 1 lakh crore to update the current education infrastructure and technology across the country, over the next four years.

# Government to relaunch RISE or Revitalising Infrastructure and Systems in Education by 2022.

# Every block with more than 50% ST population and at least 20,000 tribal people will have 'Ekalavya' school, which will be at par with Navodaya Vidayalas.