Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar on Monday tabled supplementary demands worth ₹4,284.65 crore in the Assembly. Of this, ₹3,146.43 crore is the demand for additional expenditure till the next session while the remaining amount pertains to expenses already incurred by the government.
A supplementary demand is an additional grant to meet government expenditure, outside the annual budget.
“The rest of the amount has already been spent and we want to make a provision for it,” Mr. Mungantiwar said.
The government will be presenting its interim budget on Wednesday. With this, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led State government has presented supplementary demands worth ₹1,71, 961 crore since December 2014.
According to Mr. Mungantiwar, the supplementary demand figure jumped because of the State’ decision to allot ₹ 2,000 crore from its contingency fund to be spent for farmers suffering from natural calamities such as drought. The government has allocated an extra ₹10.82 crore as financial assistance to the heirs of farmers who have committed suicides in the current financial year.
It has also provided ₹1,000 crore for the expenditure incurred on concessions given in the electricity tariff for agricultural pump and power loom consumers in the State, while ₹482.26 crore has been allocated to comply with the Bombay High Court order to issue pension to freedom fighters who were denied it on technical grounds. The State government also made a ₹305-crore allocation for milk procurement.
“Dairies have been asked to shell out extra money to milk suppliers, for which a budget allocation was not made in March last year. Hence, ₹305 crore has been sought under the supplementary demands,” said Mr. Mungantiwar.
