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

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.