KOLKATA: In a first, chief minister Mamata Banerjee will read out the Budget statement for 2021-22 and present the vote-on-account on Friday.
Two decades back, on February 26, 2001, Banerjee, then the country’s first woman railway minister, had presented her first Railway Budget in Parliament.
State finance minister Amit Mitra, who is under medical supervision, had urged Raj Bhavan and Assembly speaker Biman Banerjee if the chief minister could present the budget in his absence. Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Thursday issued a formal order allowing it.
The Raj Bhavan order said the Governor is authorising the chief minister “to perform the duties relating to the presentation of Annual Financial Statement of the Government of West Bengal for the year 2021-2022 and Motion for Vote-On-Account and also the presentation of Supplementary Estimates for the year 2020-21”.
As per political convention, an outgoing government in an election year presents an interim budget or vote-on-account for four months and leaves it to the new government to present the full-budget. The vote-on-account usually allows the state government, which slips into caretaker mode once the poll dates are announced, to carry out the state spending from April 1, the new financial year. Vote-on-account is a formality and does not require a debate.
On February 10, 2020, Mitra had presented a state budget outlay of Rs 2,55,677 crore for the year 2020-21. However, Bengal — like the rest of the country — has seen increased budgetary spending in health to combat the Covid pandemic. Bengal was also battered by Cyclone Amphan in May last year.
Mamata is likely to preside over the state cabinet meeting in the assembly on Friday before presenting the vote-on-account.
In her first budget speech in 2001, CM Banerjee had concluded by quoting Tagore: “Give me the strength, never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might.” In her long stints as Union railway minister, she had presented several railway budgets, both in NDA and UPA regimes.