Invoking social reformer Basavanna and early 20th-century Mysuru king Krishnaraja Wadiyar, Siddaramaiah, who is also the finance minister, said in his budget speech that Karnataka had always tried to balance development and social justice. He slammed the opposition BJP for describing Congress's five guarantees as freebies and said his party was forced to deliver those guarantees because of the high inflation and declining real incomes that common people are suffering.