No separate agriculture budget for Telangana as expected

HYDERABAD: There will be no separate budget for agriculture in the state. Though, the state government has decided to introduce a separate agriculture budget for the financial year 2018-19, it dropped the idea. The reason for this is the absence of provision for “separate department-wise budget in the Constitution. The legislative procedures also do not permit a separate budget for any department. 

Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who held a meeting with officials on budget-related issues on Monday, said that the state government was according top priority to agriculture from the beginning and sufficient funds would be allocated in this Budget to take up more programmes and schemes for farmers. The state government had earlier  decided to introduce a separate budget for agriculture as it was giving more importance to the sector. A discussion took place on the feasibility of such a proposal in the meeting. 

Officials said the entire State budget should be one and only one and the Constitution guidelines would not allow to have separate budgets for each department. Under Rule 150 of the legislative guidelines, receipts and expenditure were only treated as budget. Other plans, programmes and schemes would come under the Bills and as such they cannot be treated as separate budget, officials informed Rao.

The chief minister said the budget itself would explain the priority given to agriculture, allocation of funds, programmes and schemes.Ministers T Harish Rao, P Srinivas Reddy, Etela Rajender, P Mahender Reddy, Tummala Nageswara Rao, Chief Whips in the Assembly and Council Koppula Eswar and P Sudhakar Reddy respectively and other officials were present at the meeting. Telangana Legislature secretary Narasimhacharyulu was also invited to the meeting

CS’ directive to officials
Meanwhile, Chief Secretary SK Joshi asked the officials to upload answers to all the questions being raised by members in the last session of the Assembly and the Council on the Legislature Secretariat portal. At a review with officials at the Secretariat here on Monday, Joshi wanted the officials to upload the answers to all the questions raised as LCQ, LAQ, SNQ and also under Rule 74 and Rule 344 and Zero Hour mentions. 

Budget session
The Budget session of the State Legislative Assembly and Council will commence March 12. Governor ESL Narasimhan will address the joint session of the Assembly and Council on March 12 at 10 am. Two notifications for Assembly and Council were issued on Monday.