Bihar Contingency Fund (Amendment) Bill passed in Assembly

The Legislative Assembly today approved the Bihar Contingency Fund (Amendment) Bill, 2015 among four bills on the penultimate day of the budget session.
The bills were passed by voice vote after deliberation by the members during the post-lunch session.
Besides the Bihar Contingency Fund (Amendment) Bill, 2015, the other bills getting nod from the House were the Bihar Advocate Welfare Fund (Amendment) Bill, 2015; the Srimati Radhika Sinha Institute and Sachchidanand Sinha Library (Acquisition and Management) Bill, 2015 and the Bihar Appropriation (Vote On Account) Bill, 2015.
The Bihar Contingency (Amendment) Bill, 2015 seeks to raise the corpus under this head to four per cent of the state government's expenditure budget at Rs 1.20 lakh crore for the 2015-16 fiscal against the three per cent limit earlier, state Finance Minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav said.

Of the total corpus of Rs 4,827.41 crore under the contingency fund post-enactment of the legislation, about one third of the fund at Rs 1,609.14 crore would be used for relief and rehabilitation works in the event of natural calamity, he said.
The amendment would also enable the state government to allocate from the contingency fund to those projects for which no budgetary provision was made, Yadav said, adding that the corpus could also be used to meet fund deficit arising in a scheme due to reduction in central grants.