NEW DELHI: Coming hardly two months before the general elections, people are expecting the Narendra Modi government to present a popular budget this time. This budget session, which starts on 31 January, will be the last for the current Lok Sabha as the general elections are likely to be held in April-May.
In the absence of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is recuperating in the United States, his Cabinet colleague Piyush Goyal will table the budget as he has been given the interim charge of the ministry. Sources said that the session, which has been called to pass a vote-on-account ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, does not require more than a few days to transact its business. But the government’s decision to call a 14-day long session has given rise to speculation hat there may be a few “surprises” like the Quota Bill passed during the winter session, apart from the budget, which may have some popular schemes to unveil.
The session may see the NDA government trying to push through some pending legislation like the Citizenship Amendment Bill, the Bill to make “triple talaq” punishable and the amendments to the Aadhaar Act, which have already been passed by the Lok Sabha and need to be cleared by the Rajya Sabha. However, sources said, the Bills may not be passed in the Rajya Sabha as the government does not have the required majority in the Upper House. “There is one option for getting these Bills passed by calling the joint session of the Parliament. However, the government never used this important ‘weapon’ to break the deadlock in Parliament. It remains to be seen whether the government goes for that option,” a source said. Such a joint session has been called thrice in the past, but the Modi government is yet to call one. The Citizenship Amendment Bill seeks to provide Indian citizenship to persecuted minorities—Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists and Christians—from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, after their stay in India for seven years, instead of 12 years at present. This will be applicable to those who came to India before 31 December 2014. Though under tremendous pressure from its ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevek Sangh and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the government may not opt for the ordinance route to build the Ram temple at Ayodhya. The next hearing of the Ayodhya case by the Supreme Court is scheduled for 29 January.
The government is also toying with the idea to change the financial year cycle from April-March to January-December. Jaitley had announced in Parliament that the government was planning to switch to the new financial year cycle. While replying to a question in the Lok Sabha in 2017, he had said that the matter was under active consideration of the government.
If the change is effected, this will change the 152-year-long tradition which was started in 1867. If that happens, from next year, the financial year will begin on 1 January and end on 31 December. Accordingly, the date for the budget session will also change.
Already departing from the British-era practice of tabling the budget on 28 February, this government had presented the Budget on 1 February in 2017.