Govt may not go for full budget: It prefers vote-on-account

Hyderabad: With the possibility of the Election Commission of India announcing the poll schedule anytime after February 9, the state government decided to go in for a vote-on-account budget. The budget session would commence during the second week of February. It may be mentioned here that initially the government thought of going in for a full budget.

Top officials of the Finance department said that the budget preparatory meetings were on to ascertain the requirement of the funds and the financial status of each department.Amidst the Centre’s move to go for vote on account, the state Finance wing felt that it may not be possible to take into consideration the central grants in the outlay if a full budget was to be presented.

The government is facing serious problems to mobilise financial resources to implement the six guarantees on one hand and on the other it feels that the Centre may not be in a position to help the state for next six months till it presents a full budget. Officials said that the government was not confident of mobilizing the financial resources without the Centre’s help. Hence, it felt that it would be better to go in for vote on account in the place of annual budget.

Officials said that another consideration for going in for the vote-on-account budget was if the Election Commission announces schedule during the second week, then all parties and leaders would be busy in electioneering and hence holding a full budget session would not be possible.

Officials said that the duration of the session will be not more than seven days and the government will focus on introducing some bills mainly the Caste Census bill and table the CAG reports in the House.