The Budget session of Parliament will be held from 23 February to 13 May. The Railway Budget will be presented on 25 February, followed by the Economic Survey on 26 February and the Union Budget will be presented three days later.
The schedule was announced by the government on Thursday after a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs finalised it.
The Union Budget will be presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and the railway budget by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu.
The session will have 31 sittings over 81 days, with recess from 17 March to 24 April for standing committee meetings. The session will not be interrupted by the state assembly schedule for Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, West Bengal and Assam.
"Budget session of Parliament this year will run full course with recess in between unlike in 2011 when the recess was done away with on account of Assembly elections in five states," the government statement said.
The budget will be keenly watched by not just investors in India and abroad, but also by political rivals of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, since the NDA government is at the mid-point of its five-year term, the last one to be presented in 2019 being a vote-on-account.
The Central government employees and pensioners will be eagerly waiting for the government's stance on the recommendations of 7th Central Pay Commission, in the wake of some reports that the government may defer payment of allowances.
The Commission had estimated that the impact of the recommendations will be Rs 1.02 lakh crore in FY2017, of which Rs 28,450 crore will have to be borne by the Indian Railways. The pay panel's proposals cover about 48 lakh Central government employees and about 55 lakh pensioners.
The implementation of the pay panel's proposals, according to the Reserve Bank of India, "will impart upward momentum to this (inflationary) trajectory for a period of one to two years."
