Budget session likely in mid-March

Hyderabad: The budget session of Telangana State Assembly is likely to be further delayed as Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has instructed all the departments to fine tune budget proposals to meet the fund requirements for welfare and development programmes including the new schemes targeting all communities being introduced from 2017-18 financial year.

Earlier, government had decided to conduct the budget session from February last week but tentatively it is now planning to hold the session from March second week.

It may be mentioned here that KCR had recently decided to revive all traditional occupations like art crafts, fishing, modernisation of saloons, sheep and goat farming, village poultry farms, handlooms, self employment schemes etc and allocate specific funds for each scheme to provide livelihood to village folks.

Top officials of the State Finance department told The Hans India, that the CM is specific about the allocation of funds to every development programme taken up by all departments.

The officials have been asked to furnish date regarding the specific communities, their living standards and economic status in all the districts.

The CM instructed Animal Husbandry, Industries, Rural Development, BC, SC, ST and Minority welfare departments to come up with proposals targeting 100 per cent utilisation of funds besides plugging loopholes in the execution of the schemes.

State Finance department would play a facilitator to prepare the proposals on the fund allocations in accordance to the priority being given to each program.

The Chief Minister also directed other departments like Roads and Buildings and Panchayati Raj which are engaged in the development of infrastructure development, Civil Supplies wing which is implementing subsidised food security schemes and Municipal Administration and Urban Development department engaged in improving the urban infrastructure to cut down scheme expenditure (mainly non plan expenditure) in view of the increased fund requirement for several welfare schemes in 2017- 18.

As all the departments are busy preparing proposals, officials said it would take at least three weeks time to compile and finalise the fund requirement.

In the present circumstance, government is planning to hold the budget session from March second week and introduce budget in the third week as it is mandatory for the budget proposals and appropriation bill to be approved by March 31st in the Assembly.

Officials said that this year also the allocation for development expenditure (earlier called as plan budget) would be more than scheme expenditure (previously non- plan budget) as KCR is keen to increase expenditure on development every year.

In 2016-17, the total plan outlay was Rs 67,630 crore and the non-plan budget was Rs 62,785 crore out of Rs 1.30 lakh crore budget proposal.