How did UPA delay 2012 Budget: EC

Mukesh Ranjan

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 19

The Election Commission has written to Cabinet Secretary PK Sinha asking him to explain the procedure followed by the previous UPA government to delay tabling the Budget in 2012, when dates of assembly elections clashed with the Budget session.

Incidentally, in 2012 too, the same set of states — Punjab, UP, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur — was scheduled to go for assembly elections. The Opposition had objected then and the UPA government, led by Manmohan Singh, had accepted their stand and postponed Budget presentation from February 28 to March 16.

Sources in the EC said the poll panel, in the letter which was sent yesterday, had asked Sinha to furnish the government’s response by tomorrow morning. Thus, now the presentation of the Budget for 2017-18, which the government has scheduled for February 1 and the notification for convening the session of Parliament from January 31 has already been issued, hangs in balance.

However, the government appeared determined to go ahead with the financial exercise according to the plan, as Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and other officials today participated in the “halwa ceremony”, a ritual which marks the process of printing documents for the Budget.

“After the halwa ceremony, over 100 Finance Ministry officials will stay in Budget printing press till the FM’s Budget speech is over,” the ministry said in a series of tweets.

Meanwhile, the poll watchdog has also sought details on the process involved in preparing and presenting the Budget.

The government is learnt to have described the Budget as an annual constitutional exercise covering the entire country and not just a few states, an apparent rebuttal of the Opposition charge that the Budget would be used to woo voters in the poll-bound states.