Crucial Bihar Budget session from Monday likely to be stormy

The Bihar Budget session begins Monday, facing opposition over law and order issues, with key debates on economic plans and women's employment initiatives.

The Budget session of the Bihar Vidhan Sabha commencing from Monday is likely to be crucial due to high expectations associated with it in the wake of the Nitish government’s big promises and stormy due to the Opposition’s posturing on law and orders, especially the inconclusive probe into the teenaged medical aspirant’s mysterious death in a private Patna hostel.

Bomb and dog squad team inspects the Bihar Legislative Assembly premises on the eve of state budget session in Patna, Bihar, India, Sunday. (SANTOSH KUMAR/HT)

The first day will commence with the Governor’s address to the joint sitting of both the Houses of the Bihar Legislature at the Central Hall. He will present the blueprint of the government’s future plans and the achievements so far.

The same day, the Bihar Economic Survey report will also be tabled. This will be the 20th report of the Bihar Economic Survey, a practice started by the Nitish Kumar government in 2006-07.

The Budget for 2026-27 will be presented on February 3. Finance minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav will present the Budget. After that there will be debate on the motion of thanks on the Governor’s address.

Bihar’s Budget presentation will take place just two days after the Union Budget and that will give an indication of the Centre-state alignment on resource management and roadmap for the development of Bihar, which remains the poorest state with the lowest per capita income.

Opposition leaders are also keeping an eye on the roll-out of the second phase of the CM Mahila Rozgaar Yojana under which the women would get up to ₹2-lakh assistance for those who had availed initial grant of ₹10,000 to successfully start their own businesses.The Nitish government had last week announced its implementation in phases.

However, the biggest issue that the Opposition is set to confront the government with is law and order. Leader of Opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav has already made his intentions clear by terming the CBI probe into medical aspirant’s death as a reflection of “the corrupt, incompetent, inefficient, compromised and unprofessional administrative structure” of the Bihar government.

In order to run the session hassle-free and with productive business hours, Vidhan Sabha Speaker Prem Kumar sought cooperation from the opposition parties. He said that he would like discussions to take place in a positive environment with the cooperation of everyone in line with the established traditions, rules and the procedure of the Bihar Legislative Assembly.

On February 7, the foundation day of the Bihar Vidhan Sabha building, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will address a joint sitting of both the Houses at the Central Hall in the first sitting.

The first full Budget session of the new government will conclude on February 27. There will be19 sittings during the session. It will also be the first Budget session for Prem Kumar as Speaker.

Last year’s Budget had an outlay of ₹3.17 lakh crore, with an increase of ₹38,169 crore or 13.69% from the 2025-25. It was followed by supplementary budgets exceeding ₹90,000 crore.

This year, experts say, apart from the explicit pre-election freebies estimated at over ₹40,000 crore, mass recruitment into government jobs has also sharply increased salary expenditure, now projected to exceed ₹50,000 crore in the current financial year. With more recruitment in the pipeline, the government pushes for job creation and plans to take the Mahila Rozgaar Yojana to the next stage by providing up to ₹2-lakh incentive to eligible woman entrepreneurs, adequate budgetary provisions would have to be made this time.