Assembly Speaker HN Dikshit approved the tentative agenda for Budget session till March 10. The session is to start from February 18. The agenda will be formally approved by the Business Advisory Committee of the House which will meet in Lucknow on February 17.
As per the agenda released on Tuesday, the Budget session would begin with the joint address to both Houses of the Legislature by Governor Anandi Ben Patel on February 18. The next day, a general debate on the motion of thanks to the Governor’s address would take place.
On February 22, Finance minister Suresh Khanna will table the Budget for 2021-22 and the general debate on motion of thanks would continue on February 23, 24 and 25. After a three-day break, the debate on motion of thanks would resume on March 1 and continue till March 5.
On March 6, the House will resume and discussion of budgetary grants of different departments will be taken up on March 8 and 9 and the budget was likely to be adopted by the House on March 10.
This will be the last Budget by the Yogi government. In the last four decades, Suresh Khanna is the only Finance minister to have the distinction of tabling five consecutive budgets. The Chief minister has already announced that the forthcoming budget would be paperless as was done by the Union government.
Besides focussing on infra projects and creating more job avenues, this year’s budget was likely to boost people’s welfare programmes of the state government. Some special announcements for farmers and youths could also be witnessed, keeping in view the ongoing farmers’ stir against the new Farm laws.
With the UP government deciding to go for a paperless budget and proceedings of the legislature, Rs 50,000 each has been sanctioned to MLAs and MLCs for purchasing ipads and tablets.
The budget size for the current fiscal 2020-21 is Rs 5.12 lakh crore and the next budget is likely to be over Rs 5.50 lakh crore,
During the Budget session, six Bills will be tabled in the House for replacing ordinances into legislation. The ordinances promulgated when the House was not in session are UP Pension Regularisation Ordinance, 2020, UP Cinema (Regulation Amendment) Ordinance, 2020, UP Prohibition of Religious Conversion Ordinance 2020, UP Revenue Code (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020, UP Cane Purchase (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020, State Ayush University and UP Regulation of Urban Premises Tenancy Ordinance, 2021.