Vote On Account Approved: Members Views Will Be Taken Into Consideration: Fm

PARLIAMENT TODAY completed the first stage of the budgetary exercise with both Houses approving the vote on account for 2000-2001 even as Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha assured that he would keep in mind the sentiments expressed by members over the rollback of the cut in food and fertiliser subsidies.

With the completion of the exercise, both Houses were adjourned for a month-long recess, during which the Standing Committees of Parliament will go into the demands for grants of various Ministries.

The second phase of the Budget session will begin on April 17. The Lok Sabha well past midnight last night passed the Vote on Account, while the Rajya Sabha returned it this evening.

 

Mr Sinha said that the issue was not strictly a budgetary matter and that the administrative prices could be raised or brought down any time but his reply did not satisfy the Opposition members. RJD, Samajwadi Party and CPI-M members staged a walkout in protest against his failure to announce the rollback of the budgetary proposals on cut in subsidies.

Finance Minister, however, stuck to his position and lambasted the Congress for adopting double standards on the issue of subsidy.

Mr Sinha told the Opposition that their attempts to wedge a rift in the NDA on the issue of subsidy cut would not work and the alliance of the ruling coalition would remain solid as a rock.

Quoting from the budget speeches of the former Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, Sinha retorted "If you do something, it is virtuous and it becomes vicious if I do the same". He said that the budget had been presented this time under exceptional circumstances since the Kargil war led to the hike of Defence allocation by Rs. 13,000 crore.

Besides, he pointed out that the budgetary support to the annual plans had been hiked by Rs. 11,000 crore and the interim award to the 11th Finance Commission accounted for another Rs. 11,000 crore. There was an increase of interest payments by Rs. 10,000 crore, he added. He pointed out that all these additional expenditures added up to Rs. 45,000 crore if these were not there, the fiscal deficit could have been contained at a much lesser percentage of GDP in the new fiscal.

The Finance Minister asserted that the government would control non-Plan expenditure.