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Lok Sabha saves ₹801 crore in cost cuts
The Lok Sabha secretariat saved ?801 crore ($108 million) in the past four financial years through cost-cutting measures such as curbs on physical conferences and use of electric vehicles, according to a Parliament official. The measures, driven by Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla, have saved around 25% of budgetary provision, the highest cost-cutting ever recorded in Parliament. The current Lok Sabha had to restrict outreach programmes and scrap the 2020 Monsoon Session as the Covid-19 pandemic swept across India.
In the past four financial years, including two constrained by the pandemic, the Lok Sabha secretariat saved ₹801 crore from its budgetary allocations through cost-cutting measures such as curbs on physical conferences, use of electric vehicles and reduction of subsidies in the Parliament canteen.
The austerity measures, driven by Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla, have “saved ₹801.46 crore, or around 25% of the budgetary provision during the first four years of the 17th Lok Sabha that was constituted in May 2019,” a Parliament official said on condition of anonymity.
“This is the highest cost-cutting ever recorded in Parliament,” a second official said, also declining to be named.
“An amount of ₹258.47 crore was saved during the financial year 2021-22. During the last financial year, ₹132.60 crore, which is around 17% of the budgetary provision, was saved,” according to a note of the Lok Sabha secretariat. “Comparing this with previous Lok Sabhas, ₹7.01 crore was saved during the 12th Lok Sabha. ₹99.52 crore, ₹145.07 crore, ₹94.17 crore and ₹461 crore were saved from 13th to 16th Lok Sabha.”
The current Lok Sabha, which will end in May next year, had to restrict outreach programmes and scrap the 2020 Monsoon Session as the Covid-19 pandemic swept across India. All eight sessions of Parliament from 2020 to 2022 were curtailed due to Covid-19 and other issues.
Some measures such as online conferences were introduced during the pandemic. For more than three months, lawmakers and officials were unable to attend Parliament due to Covid-related restrictions.
“Cost savings due to enforcement of efficiency in administrative setup, use of EVs, video conferences in place of physical meetings, less travel expenses, online events by PRIDE or the research and training cell, curtailment of printing work, e-waste management, digital payments, GEM-based procurement and savings in canteen led to huge savings in our budget,” the second official said.
Birla’s efforts to stop use of paper, files and other physical documents started soon after he became speaker in June 2019. “Earlier, we used to get 20 rims of paper for printing. Now we are allotted just two rims for a year,” said a departmental head, seeking anonymity. Hard copies of bills or Union budgets are no more available; finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman took a step forward to use a tablet to read out her budget speech.
Similarly, Indian Tourism Development Corporation replaced Northern Railways in 2021 to run the Parliament canteen. Subsidies were done away with as the new contractor started selling food at market rates.
Also, fuel-guzzling SUVs used for ferrying lawmakers in New Delhi were discarded and more electric vehicles were introduced by Birla in a major cost-saving measure.
The cost-cutting measures will continue in future to create a greener and more efficient Parliament, a spokesperson of the Lok Sabha said.
