HYDERABAD : The Budget session of the State Legislative Assembly will commence on March 6. State Legislature Secretary V Narasimha Charyulu issued notification to this effect on Saturday. Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan will address the joint session of the Legislature at 11 am on March 6.
According to sources, the 2020-21 Budget will be presented in the Assembly on March 9. The upcoming Budget session gains political significance as the government will move a resolution against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Telangana will become the sixth state to adopt a resolution against the CAA. The Assembly will also adopt another resolution requesting the Central government to revert to the old format of the National Population Register (NPR).
The State government has already decided to put on hold the NPR exercise in the State. As several other states like Kerala and West Bengal too opposed the new format of NPR, the State government will wait for the Centre’s reaction on the resolutions adopted by various States and then only take up the survey for the Census 2020. Besides, the CAA, NPR and NRC, the TRS government will also launch an attack on the Narendra Modi government over the economic slowdown which has adversely affected the State’s revenues.
Budget may not cross Rs 1.50 lakh crore mark: Sources
As the Central grants and taxes to the State were reduced considerably, the size of the State Budget may not witness much incremental hike this year, sources said. The State government had already done 20 per cent downward revision of the Budget when compared with the vote-on-account Budget for 2019-20. The size of the vote-on-account Budget was Rs1.82 lakh crore and the size of the Budget introduced in the September was Rs 1.46 lakh crore. Of which, the State could not realise Rs 10,000 crore estimated revenue through sale of government lands. Thus, the actual Budget size had already reduced to Rs1.36 lakh crore. With this, the Budget size for 2020-21 may not cross Rs1.50 lakh crore mark, sources said.