Centre approves Puducherry's Rs 10K crore draft budget 

PUDUCHERRY: After a long-drawn controversy, the Centre approved Puducherry's draft budget for 2022-2023 at an outlay of Rs 10,696.16 crore and communicated the same to the Union Territory government on Friday. The outlay is Rs 282 crore more than previous year’s budget outlay of  Rs 10, 414 crore.

The approval comes after Chief Minister N Rangasamy called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman at New Delhi. He also had discussions with Union Home Minister Amit Shah over phone.

According to highly-placed sources, while the Puducherry government had sent the budget proposal for Rs 11,000 crore and sought Rs 2,000 crore as additional assistance to the Centre, the approval was sanctioned for Rs 10,696.16 crore. The sources added, the Prime Minister had assured to consider the CM’s plea while finalising the Revised Estimates (RE) of the Union Budget and Puducherry RE.

Presently, the GST compensation is not available as the Centre is yet to take a policy decision on the issue and hence, could not be included into Puducherry’s resources to finance the outlay, he said. Since the central assistance allocated in the Central budget for Puducherry cannot be altered  and unlike States, Puducherry cannot present a deficit budget as it is an UT, the outlay has to be as per the available resources. The source added, however, the PM assured the CM support for Puducherry’s requirements and additional finance is expected.

Budget session to be resumed next week

With the approval in place, the budget session -- which had been adjourned sine die after the Lt Governor’s address on the opening day -- would be resumed next week after the Puducherry Independence Day celebrations on August 16 . The budget preparation will require a few days and then the budget would be presented by Chief Minister N Rangasamy who holds the finance portfolio in the Assembly, sources said.