Now, it is ‘agriculture action plan,’ not ‘budget’

March 20, 2013 01:42 pm | Updated November 17, 2021 05:51 am IST - HYDERABAD:

The government began a fire-fighting operation over the controversy over ‘agriculture budget’ for 2013-14 on Tuesday when it decided to call the document ‘agriculture action plan’ instead.

Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy issued the instructions to Ministers -- Anam Ramanarayan Reddy and Kanna Lakshminarayana to effect the change by replacing the word “budget” wherever it occurred in the document by “action plan”, sources said.

Speaker’s permission

According to sources, the government is expected to seek the Speaker’s permission to clarify that the speech read out by the Agriculture Minister was an action plan and not budget as was printed on the copies. Sources said that during the meeting, the Ministers are believed to have conveyed that lack of coordination and communication gap between the officials of Planning, Finance and Agriculture department resulted in the faux pas.

The Agriculture department acted as the nodal agency for the agriculture action plan/budget and it sought inputs from the Finance and Planning officials.

On Monday, members found to their surprise the word “budget” replaced by handwritten word “action plan” on the cover page of the document. However, the word “budget” which figured 42 times in the inside pages, was kept intact without any replacement.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.