Budget was leaked, says Kerala Opposition

March 03, 2017 12:47 pm | Updated November 29, 2021 01:35 pm IST - THIRUVANANTHAPURAM

Opposition legislators protest in the Kerala Assembly on Friday.

Opposition legislators protest in the Kerala Assembly on Friday.

Members of the United Democratic Front (UDF) disrupted the presentation of the Kerala State budget for 2017-18 alleging leak of the budget to the social media.

Opposition members barged into the well of the House two-and-a-half hours into the budget speech by Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac, alleging that the sanctity of the budget had been compromised with its leak through social media and TV channels.

 

Raising the issue, Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala said there was no meaning in the budget speech as the entire budget was in the public domain now. 

Although Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan tried to pacify the Opposition with the explanation that it was normal for the media to pick up points from the budget speech and publish them, Mr. Chennithala said he could quote from the information that he had already received about the further parts of the budget speech, which showed that the budget had been leaked. The leak could have happened only from the Finance Minister's office as he was  'a man of social media', the Opposition Leader said.

The Opposition members later walked out of the House raising slogans.

The budget ‘leak’ amounted to a major constitutional lapse, the Opposition charged and wanted the presentation of a fresh one under a new Finance Minister.

The UDF also met the Speaker seeking his intervention in the matter since the budget papers were the property of the House and it was the responsibility of the government to protect their sanctity.

The Opposition came up with its charge when the Finance Minister was almost two hours into his speech and reached paragraph 230 of his rather lengthy 148-page text. Mr. Chennithala alleged that the finer details of the Finance Minister’s speech was circulating in the social media even before he had delivered the contents.

The allegations momentarily led to all-round bewilderment, with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan promising to look into the matter since he was not privy to the developments. The Finance Minister too made a similar statement, but this did not satisfy the UDF members who initially trooped into the well of the House, but later announced the boycott of the rest of the Budget speech on the ground that the exercise had lost its sanctity and there was no point in listening to it.

Later Mr. Chennithala, with his Congress colleague V.D. Satheeshan, alleged that relevant portions of Dr. Isaac’s budget speech had been carried verbatim in regional papers also.

“The budget has lost its sanctity. The leak is a reflection of the inefficiency of the government. Dr. Isaac should resign owning responsibility for it,” they said.

Dr. Isaac, however, maintained that there was no leak in the classified budget papers. Only the highlights prepared for the benefit of presspersons had made their way into social media.

He did not consider this as part of the budget papers along with other supplementary documents.

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