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April 2011

Budget on the back burner — For UPA managers, meaningful discussion on Budget is far less important than the need for parliamentarians to campaign for Assembly polls.

By Raman Jokhakar
Tarunkumar G. Singhal
Chartered Accountants
Reading Time 2 mins
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If the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has its way, Parliament will approve the Union Budget for 2011-12 by 25th March, in less than a month of its presentation on 28th February. This will be both unusual and unprecedented. Worse, it will deal a blow to the time-honoured tradition of subjecting the government’s annual Budget to elaborate scrutiny and discussion by members of Parliament, before the final assent by the president.

The schedule, followed for several decades, is that the Budget receives Parliament’s nod of approval by the first week of May. A lot happens during the nine weeks between the presentation of the Budget on the last working day of February and its passage in the first week of May. Various parliamentary committees examine Budget provisions and present their findings to the Finance Minister. Also, members of the two Houses get an opportunity to discuss the various provisions in the Finance Bill and even make useful suggestions on the expenditure programmes of a few central ministries. There is, of course, a short recess in between. But that only allows the parliamentary committees to complete their scrutiny of the Budget and table their reports before the two Houses.

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