By IANS,
New Delhi: Applying the guillotine, the Lok Sabha Thursday passed at one go the demands for grants of all ministries, including defence and home affairs, and the Appropriation Bill, marking the end of the second phase of the three-stage exercise for the budget for 2011-12.
Speaker Meira Kumar, who applied the guillotine, said this would also apply to the ministries of mines and transport, whose functioning was to be debated Thursdday but which fell through due to the opposition protests in the house since morning.
The protests, demanding the government’s resignation over the Wikileaks expose on UPA-I surviving a parliamentary trust vote in July 2008 by bribing MPs from other parties, had led to two adjournments of the Lok Sabha and later a walk out by the entire opposition led by Leader of Opposition and BJP leader Sushma Swaraj.
After the opposition walked out raising slogans against the government, the speaker applied the guillotine, and with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee moving the Appropriation Bill, the house passed them at one go.
The Lok Sabha has only discussed the allocations for the ministries of rural development and external affairs.
The guillotine is a parliamentary procedure that allows for curtailing the debates on demands for grants of various ministries to ensure timely passage of the Finance Bill, ensuring completion of the budget exercise.
Parliament has already completed the first phase of the budgetary exercise by approving the supplementary demands for 2010-11 after the finance minister’s reply to the general discussion on the budget.
The guillotine was applied much earlier than usual, due to the budget session being curtailed in view of the assembly elections in West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in April-May.
The budget session will end on March 25 instead of in mid-April so as to enable MPs participate in the election campaign.
Thus, the entire budgetary exercise, including passage of the demands for grants, the Appropriation Bills and the Finance Bill is to be completed by March 24.
The Finance Bill, which incorporates the tax proposals for 2011-12, will be taken up for discussion in the Lok Sabha March 21-22 and the entire process would be completed by March 24.
Mukherjee had presented the budget proposals for 2011-12 in Lok Sabha on Feb 28.