Railway Budget's inclusion shows breakthrough in tradition of Budget presentation: CPI

With 2017 set to witness the Railway Budget being subsumed in the General Budget for the first time ever, the Communist Party of India (CPI) has stated that this Budget is a breakthrough in the traditional presentation.

"This is the first time that the Railway budget is being incorporated in the General Budget. Earlier we used to have separate budgets, so this is a new beginning. It is a breakthrough in the traditional presentation of the budget," CPI national secretary D. Raja told ANI.

However, the Left leader was not so optimistic about the state of the country's economy, adding that even the Economic Survey admitted that the Indian economy was in a bad shape and the GDP growth is very low.

"We have to wait and see what the Finance Minister is going to do in the budget because this budget is presented in the context of the forth coming Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime and also the impact of demonetisation," he said.

President Pranab Mukherjee yesterday addressed both Houses of the Parliament ahead of the budget session.

The announcement is said to be of historical importance particularly in sight of demonetisation of high-end currency notes that was brought about in November 2016.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley also tabled Economic Survey 2017 before the Parliamentary session.

The Union Budget will be presented today in Parliament by Jaitley and there will be no separate Rail budget from this year, as it has been merged with the General Budget.

The government has advanced the date of budget presentation so as to complete the entire process before the end of financial year.

The first part of the budget session has been kept brief in view of ongoing assembly polls in five states.