Maharashtra seeks nod to spend extra Rs16,000 crore

Of that, Rs 8,000 crore is required to spend on drought-tackling measures, said the government

The drought in Maharashtra is affecting the state’s economy in a major way. The government on Tuesday presented Rs 16,000 crore worth supplementary demands out of which more than Rs 8,000 crore were required for drought-tackling measures taken by the state. To meet these expenses, the state will either have to cut some of the budget provisions or increase its borrowings, which currently stands at Rs 3.71 lakh crore.

As per the Constitution, the governments have to present a budget before the legislature, which authorises the government to raise revenue through taxes and other means and incur expenditure on administration and various development schemes in a financial year.

Apart from the budget, the governments can also come before the legislature seeking approval for expenditure for which no provision was made in the budget. These are called supplementary demands.

As per the government statistics, in last four years it has presented supplementary demands 10-17 per cent of the actual original budget.

The BJP had always accused the then Congress-NCP government of financial indiscipline for presenting huge supplementary demands, which should ideally be made only for unforeseen expenditure arising due to some emergency.

When pointed out that the BJP government is also raising huge supplementary demands (it had presented Rs 14,000 crore supplementary demands in the Monsoon Assembly session in July this year), a senior minister said that the demands were made mainly for measures taken by the government to tackle the drought situation.

“Out of the Rs16,000 crore, Rs 8,000 crore will be spent on drought relief works. These were unforeseen expenditure. Another Rs1,200 crore is for the compensation to paid to municipalities in lieu of the revenue losses they suffered after the scrapping of Local Body Tax,” the minister said.

Finance minister Sudhir Mungatiwar had presented Rs 107 crore surplus budget this year. However, these huge supplementary demands means that the state will have to scrap some of the provisions made or face a revenue deficit.

Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has also already admitted that the state is undergoing financial difficulties and the budgets for next three years will be revenue deficit budgets. He blamed the previous Congress-NCP governments for the situation in which the state is finding it difficult to manage its expenditures from its revenue and has to therefore borrow money.