Fiscal deficit to be 7.8% not 6%: Montek

India's fiscal deficit would shoot to about 7.8 per cent if off-budget items like bonds issued to oil companies are included, said Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on February 16 projected a fiscal deficit of 6 per cent, without including the off-budget items.

"The Budget shows that the number is going to be 6 per cent as a fiscal deficit and this does not include about 1.7 per cent, which is the bonds etc, which are not counted," Ahluwalia said in in interview to Karan Thapar on the CNBC TV 18 show - India Tonight.

"This year, that is 2008-09, we started off with fiscal deficit which we thought should be 2.5 per cent and then another half a per cent for pay commission to be 3 per cent," he said.

Commenting on the government not coming out with populist Budget, Ahluwalia said, "Announcing sops in the Interim Budget was not an established parliamentary practice."

The government has been reacting to that crisis through multiple channels and since September upto the second stimulus a lot of action has been taken and fed into the budget, he said.