Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao is reliably learnt to be planning to advance the 2016 Budget session of the state Legislature to January and skip the customary Winter session, in a move that can be described as unusual.
The Chief Minister, according to sources, has decided to complete the GHMC poll process before January 25 and then convene both the Houses of Legislature for the Budget session, starting January 27.
Under the revised Business Rules of the Legislature, the Budget session will be held for a minimum period of 16 days, instead of 28 days that used to be the case in united AP regime.
The last time the Assembly sat was on October 7. Normally the Appropriation Bill that allows the government departments spend funds from April 1 onwards will be approved by the Legislature in just a day or two, before the financial year closes on March 31.
However, according to the new plan, the Appropriation Bill will be approved by the Houses almost 1.5 months earlier. The state Budget for financial year 2016-17 is likely to be presented in February itself. Sources said that normally, the state Budget is presented only after presentation of Union Budget in Parliament which will be done on February 28.
This is because the states will be in a position to know the exact allocations to various ministries, priorities for various schemes and the tax proposals by Centre and then try to readjust their estimates in the Budget presentation. It is learnt this tradition will be given a go bye. The state government now wants a deviation from it and prefer to have its budget before that, not looking for union budget details.
It appears that the Chief Minister has observed that normally, the state finance department always goes for readjustments in the funds allocations to various departments and similarly there is a chance of changing the priorities even after getting approval for the Budget in the Legislature.
However, the sources said the CM is particular that the Budget session is completed by February-end so that officials concerned could go ahead with advance planning on expenditures for various flagship programmes in the new financial year.
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