In the House sans the presence of the Opposition, the Harish Rawat Government managed to pass the State budget for the year 2016-17 on the first day of a two-day special session of the Vidhan Sabha on Thursday. The House passed the budget worth ` 40,422 crore, including the vote on account worth `13,642 crore, which was earlier passed by Parliament when the State was under the President's Rule.
It is clear from what has transpired in the House on the maiden day of the session that things happened smoothly as per the script prepared diligently by the State's top brass. "There is hardly any room for doubt that the ruling party brass has manoeuvred things to goad the Opposition in the mesh laid out and, not surprisingly, the Opposition swallowed the bait with alacrity, leading the budget being passed glitch-free," opined an observer.
Talking to The Pioneer, the State parliamentary affairs Minister and the finance minister Indira Hridayesh said that the budget had already been passed on Mach 18. "Things proved different as the Opposition did not accept the fact. Now, we had to reconvene the session to have the budget passed with the matter pending in the court. It was constitutional obligation," she averred.
With things having hapened as scripted, the State Government has wriggled out of the financial crisis, leaving the Opposition with egg on its face.
State treasury bench managed to have three Bills passed. They are Uttarakhand appropriation Bill-2016, Uttarakhand residential university Bill-2016 and Uttarakhand local body Bill, slums uplift, regularization, rehabilitation, relocation and anti -encroachment Bill-2016.
The Himalayan Garhwal University Bill-2016, Rash Behari Bose Subharti University Bill-2016, Uttarakhand money laundering Bill-2016, Uttarakhand (Uttar Pradesh municipal corporation Act-1959) amendement-2016, Uttarakhand value added tax (amendment) Bill-2016, Uttarakhand entertainment tax (amendment) Bill-2016 and Uttarakhand hilly area cultivable land consolidation Bill-2016 were tabled.