₹8,609-crore supplementary demands are 17% of actual budget

Mumbai state legislature tables ₹8,609 crore supplementary demands, pushing consolidated budget to ₹1.05 lakh crore, 17% of annual budget for FY 2023-24.

MUMBAI: With supplementary demands of ₹8,609 crore tabled in the state legislature on Monday, the size of the consolidated supplementary budget is now pegged at ₹1.05 lakh crore, which is a whopping 17% of the actual annual budget of ₹6.02 lakh crore for the financial year 2023-24. Experts attribute this to financial indiscipline and change in government priorities owing to political volatility.

HT Image

In addition to the budget of ₹6,02,008 crore presented last February by the then finance minister Devendra Fadnavis for FY 2023-24, the state government tabled supplementary budgets of ₹41,243 crore and ₹52,220 crore in July and December respectively. With the additional supplementary demands of ₹8,609 crore, the total has reached ₹6.02 lakh crore. Of this, ₹6,591 crore is the amount planned to be spent on various schemes and administrative expenditure, while the remaining has been shown as token allocation.

Rupesh Keer of Samarthan, a think-tank which studies the state budget, said, “The huge rise in the percentage of supplementary demands is an indicator of financial indiscipline, as it should ideally be at 10% of the budget size. Unfortunately, nobody, including the opposition, talks about it. The rise in the supplementary budget leads to reduction in the spending on the development budget and capital expenditure.”

The high supplementary demands, according to officials from the finance department, is also the result of the change in government priorities and the absence of proper planning. “Supplementary demands are generally for expenditure that crops up because of unforeseen reasons,” said an official. “Here, the allocations made in the supplementary demands are owing to change in priorities. For instance, after the Ajit Pawar faction joined the Shinde government in July last year, the subsequent supplementary demands were to take care of funding to the MLAs who had come with him. This results in putting the original plans and allocations aside to make way for new schemes and projects.”

The supplementary demands include the allocation of ₹2,210 for financial aid to farmers who suffered crop losses owing to unseasonal rainfall, hailstorms and cyclones in the last few months. Allocations of ₹400 crore and ₹204 crore have been made for projects in municipal corporations and for the conversion of milk to skimmed milk powder respectively. An allocation of ₹1,438 crore has also been made in the supplementary budget for the repayment of the defaulted loan taken for the Mumbai Metro 3, and the Nagpur and Pune metros.