Plea in Supreme Court against interim Budget

NEW DELHI: Within hours of the interim Budget being presented in Parliament Friday, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court seeking that it be quash on the alleged ground that there is no Constitutional provision for an interim Budget.

The petition, filed by advocate Manohar Lal Sharma, submitted that under the Constitution, there is only provision for presenting a full annual Budget and vote-on-account.

A vote-on-account is an approval taken in an election year for a limited period for government spending; a full-fledged budget is presented later by the newly elected government.

The interim Budget was presented in the Lok Sabha by Finance Minister Piyush Goyal proposing an array of incentives for both middle class and farmers. The 2019 Lok Sabha elections are scheduled to take place within a few months.

In December last year, the top court had imposed a cost of Rs 50,000 on Sharma for filing a public interest litigation against the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley over an issue related to the Reserve Bank of India's capital reserve.