The budget session of the state Assembly will tentatively be held from March 11 to May 15. Unlike previous years, the state budget will be prepared this time by following the procedures adopted for Union budget. The state government will go for vote-on-account before getting the budget sanctioned on May 15. The budget session will also have a recess between presenting and adopting, finance minister Anam Ramnarayana Reddy said.
Speaking to reporters at the media-point at the Secretariat on Tuesday, the minister said that the vote-on-account budget, along with full-fledged budget for 2013-14 would likely be introduced on March 15. A vote-on-account is aimed at seeking sanction of expenditure by the government in anticipation of a delay in the passage of a full-fledged budget before the end of the financial year on March 31, he added. The procedure proposed to be adopted by the state government has been communicated to Assembly Speaker Nadendla Manohar and Legislative Council Chairman A Chakrapani and their response is waited, the minister said.
The state government will seek passage of vote-on-account budget for three months before March end. The House will adjourn for a few days in April, so that the budget proposals, after introduction in the State Assembly, could be referred to 10 standing committees constituted by the state government. The idea behind referring budget proposals to standing committees is to discuss the demands and get suggestions. This is thought to be useful as the two to three weeks allotted for discussion on demands in the House were going waste without any purposeful debates for various reasons, he said.
The standing committees can make certain changes to the demands or grants during the recess period in April and recommend the same to the state government for inclusion in the full-fledged budget, he added. The minister said the Assembly would meet again in May to incorporate or reject the recommendations of the standing committees and finally pass the budget on May 15.