The Government may present the Union Budget for 2017-18 on February 1 amid indications that Assembly elections to five States could be held a few weeks later. The Government is understood to have decided the date after getting a go-ahead from the Election Commission of India.
A formal announcement about the date may be made on Thursday after the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs (CCPA).
After Finance Minister Arun Jaitley recently said that the Union Budget will not be presented in the middle of the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur, it’s obvious that the elections will be held in the latter half of February or early March if the Cabinet finalises February 1 as the Budget presentation date.
In view of the impeding Assembly elections, the Government is reported to have consulted the Election Commission (EC) about the Budget date. The EC concurred with the Finance Ministry’s view that the Budget is an annual financial statement and can come at any time chosen by the Government.
With a view to advance the Budget Session, the Government has already moved forward the date of the Winter Session, which will take up enabling Bills for the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). The Government hopes that by advancing both the Winter and Budget Sessions, it will have elbow room to implement the GST from April 1.
The Union Cabinet on September 21 had in-principle decided to end the colonial-era tradition of presenting the Union Budget on the last day of February and advanced it by about a month to help complete the legislative approval for annual spending plans and tax proposals before the beginning of the new financial year on April 1.
“The reason we wanted to advance the date was that we want the entire budgetary exercise to be over and the Finance Bill to be passed and implemented from April 1 onwards rather than June, because then the monsoon sets in and effectively, the expenditures start in October,” Jaitley had stated last week.
Stating that the Government wants expenditure to start in April itself, he had said there were five State Assembly elections lined up in 2017.
“We are trying to co-ordinate so that the Budget announcement doesn’t have to be on an election date. It should be reasonably before that or after that,” he had said.
The Finance Ministry had been proposing that the Budget presentation be fixed for February 1 and the entire exercise be completed by March 24.