Three Bills and a Budget: How the winter session impacts future budgets

Three laws passed in Parliament could boost central revenues, reshape GST cess flows, shift MGNREGA costs to states and create new budget headroom ahead of the 2026-27 Union Budget

Few winter sessions of the Indian Parliament have had as impactful an influence on the Union government’s finances as the one that concluded last week. For good reasons, the fortnight-long winter session that ended on December 19 will also be remembered for the way the government brought in several legislative Bills at a very short notice and ignored the Opposition demand for referring them to parliamentary committees for deeper scrutiny.

 

But, quite apart from that, there has also been little discussion over the impact of three legislative Bills, introduced during the just-concluded winter session of Parliament, on Finance Minister Nirmala