In a strange turn of events which led to extreme chaos and confusion within the media fraternity, no Budget documents were provided to them — neither in Parliament nor anywhere else — after it was pre
In a strange turn of events which led to extreme chaos and confusion within the media fraternity, no Budget documents were provided to them — neither in Parliament nor anywhere else — after it was presented by finance minister Arun Jaitley on Monday. Even as mediapersons fumed and expressed their anger on social media tools, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) cited the government’s initiative to “go green” behind the decision not to print too many copies of the much-sought-after document.
It was probably for the first time that such a bizarre turn of events marked Budget day.
Even as Mr Jaitley started reading out his Budget speech in Parliament at 11 am, the PIB informed through a mail at 11.35 am that this year “the ministry of finance has curtailed drastically the number of printed Budget sets in its efforts to go green. Accordingly, it has not provided the desired number of Budget sets to the PIB. As a result, it is not possible to distribute the copies of the Budget sets to mediapersons both at Parliament House and National Media Centre as envisaged while issuing the authority slips in this regard.”
Mediapersons were advised to surf the finance ministry’s website to avail the soft copy of the Budget documents. Immediately, there were angry reactions among the mediapersons as the links provided in the said website led to the previous year’s Budget documents. Till late evening, mediapersons encountered difficulties in downloading the heavy Budget documents due to slow Internet speed.
Wire and agency reporters were the worst hit, as they have to run flashes of key figures, like the government’s market borrowings and expenditure, soon after the Budget speech ends in Parliament. However, this time, due to the absence of hard copies, they faced difficulties in doing so.
Journalists wrote angry responses to the PIB official’s aforementioned email. Even as they struggled to get hold of Budget documents, all MPs were doled out copies of the same and later in the evening, several copies of the Budget documents were seen strewn around inside Parliament.
When the issue was raised during Mr Jaitley’s press conference, PIB officials cited the same reason of the government’s endeavour to “go green” behind the limited copies of Budget documents.
