92-Year-OId Habit Dies: Rail And Union Budget Merged!

Jaitley also said the merger will relieve railways of the liability of paying close to Rs 10,000 crore as an annual dividend to the government. The exact date for the next year would be decided keeping in view the date of assembly elections in Punjab, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh Manipur and Goa.

Railways will continue to maintain its distinct entity – as a departmentally run commercial undertaking as at present.

Making a strong point against ending the over nine-decade old tradition of presentation of separate Rail budget in Parliament, he asked the NDA government at the Centre to rethink its decision.

First reactions from the opposition on the government’s decision to merge the Rail Budget with the Union Budget.

Replying to another question, he said Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi was targeted by the BJP for suggesting a separate budget for farmers. The note, titled “Dispensing with the Rail Budget” and jointly authored by Aayog member and economist Bibek Debroy and Kishore Desai, Officer on Special Duty, argues that the exercise had failed to be of use to the sector and had become a “mechanism to announce popular measures”. This would be a kind of relief for the Railways ministry.

In a major overhaul, the cabinet today approved advancing the presentation of the annual budget by a month and scrapped the almost nine-decade old tradition of having a separate railway budget. The government hopes that advancing the date will help mobilise revenues for the new financial year from the beginning itself. It is also in a highlight that government plans to convene the Budget session of Parliament before January 25, 2017, and will plan a survey of that so that finance minister will read it out on 1 February 2016.

The Cabinet felt it is the total expenditure, irrespective of Plan or Non-Plan, that generates value for the public.

But are there any pitfalls to advancing the budget date?

Proposals by the Finance Ministry, to reform the entire budgetary process also got a green flag from the cabinet today. In fact, these experts say that the late presentation, towards the end of the financial year, helps the government anticipate the fiscal and other issues that are likely to arise during the new financial year, and make amends for the same.

Mr. Jaitley said the existing financial arrangements would continue wherein Railways will meet all their revenue expenditure, including ordinary working expenses, pay and allowances and pensions, and so on, from their revenue receipts.