The country will get its annual budget for 2014-15 on 10 July, as decided by the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs on Monday. This will be the first Union Budget to be presented by the Narendra Modi government that was elected to power last month.
The budget session in the Parliament will begin on 7 July, and the Railway Budget will be presented on 8 July, as reported by Reuters. The Economic Survey will be presented a day after the Railway Budget, as decided by the CCPA, which is headed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh.
The budget session is expected to go on for more than a month with a total of 28 sittings and may close by 14 August, Reuters reported sources as saying.
The Committee also decided that several bills will be taken up during the session on a priority basis. The Parliament may take up bills to replace ordinances, including the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities (Amendment) Ordinance and the TRAI Act (Amendment) Ordinance among others, as reported by the Press Trust of India.
The UPA government had presented an interim budget session for 2014-15 till the new government came to power. The vote-on-account budget that the previous Parliament approved will expire on 31 July.
With the Centre hiking railway fares three days ago, the Railway Budget is expected to bring in more stringent measures. The Opposition, which has already strongly voiced its demand for a rollback of the fare hike, is expected to take up the issue when the Budget session begins on 7 July, as the Railway Budget will be presented the next day.
The Budget, that will be presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, is expected to have a dose of Narendra Modi's "bitter medicine," which he had announced earlier, indicating that tough decisions would be taken by the government.
Before the parliamentary session on Budget commences, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan is also likely to take a decision on the matter of giving a party the status of Leader of Opposition, which the Indian National Congress is seeking, despite a strength of 44 members.
