Jharkhand Govt to present budget on March 3

Month-long budget session will commence on Feb 25

The Jharkhand Government budget will be tabled in the House on March 3, while the budget session will commence on February 25. The month-long budget session will run till March 25, with 17 working days. The State Cabinet Secretariat has issued a notification in this connection.

As per the notification issued by the Cabinet secretariat, the budget session will commence after Governor Ramesh Bais’ speech, followed by oath taking of new members and condolences. During the long budget session several bills will be tabled in the House.

The eighth budget of the fifth Jharkhand Assembly will have four Chief Minister Question Hour, during which members can directly pose questions before the Chief Minister. The Assembly secretariat has slatted February 28, March 7, 14, and 21 for Chief Minister Question hour.

Last year Finance Minister RameshwarOraon tabled a budget worth Rs 91,270 crore in Jharkhand VidhanSabha for 2021-22 fiscal year amid the din by BJP MLAs. Sources said that this year it is expected that the budget size will be bigger as compared to previous financial year.

Apart from the bigger size, it is also expected that like the previous budget session the coming budget session too will witness uproar from the Opposition party BJP.

During the previous budget day, BJP members headed by BJP's Khunti MLA Neelkanth Singh Munda kept reading the old budget of Raghubar Das government tenure in the Assembly as part of protest while Oraon read the budget.

Meanwhile, the State Government has roped in Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ranchi as a knowledge partner for preparing the budget.

The task of IIM Ranchi will be to collect feedback from people about the budget and based on people’s feedback and inputs of the institute, the management institute will provide necessary suggestions on how the budget will be. People will provide inputs about the proposed budget in the portal ‘Harmar budget’. Sources said that this is for the first time that the state government has joined hands with IIM Ranchi for preparing the budget.

Also, last week the State Government organized Budget Goshti (Pre Budget dialogue) under the chairmanship of Chief Minister HemantSoren to invite suggestions from different stakeholders for formulation of Budget 2022-23. Principal Secretary, Finance Department, Government of Jharkhand welcomed the participants, presented a pen picture of Budget and explained how the Government is trying to make the budget more inclusive.

Experts from various fields expressed their views on nine key thematic areas including Agriculture and Irrigation, Health, Education, Information Technology, Infrastructure, Power, Welfare, Employment and Labour & Resource Mobilization.