Several top ministers, including in charge of agriculture, rural development, health and family welfare, among others, will soon reach out to parliamentarians, sources said, adding MPs will be asked t
Several top ministers, including in charge of agriculture, rural development, health and family welfare, among others, will soon reach out to parliamentarians, sources said, adding MPs will be asked to submit constituency-specific demands that could be incorporated in the Budget. Next year’s Budget is likely to be advanced from the usual date at the end of February.
It may be noted that railway minister Suresh Prabhu had last year taken an initiative to ask zonal railway general managers to meet MPs and compile their demands. But now Mr Prabhu is asking MPs to list constituency-specific demands with the zonal GMs, and if they have any suggestions for policy-making they could speak directly to ministers or to meet him.
The other ministers are also likely to adopt the same approach.
“The MPs on their own used to earlier meet ministers to raise constituency-specific demands, but such a formal process was never practised. In the last Parliament session, we saw another initiative wherein a few ministers met MPs on a specified day to discuss issues concerning the Lok Sabha constituencies of the members,” said Mr Jagdambika Pal, BJP MP from Doomariyaganj in Uttar Pradesh.
The PM had recently sought to rope in MPs to make the Central government’s schemes reach out to the people.
