In news- The exercise for presenting a separate “agriculture budget”, with the emphasis on welfare measures for farmers, has started in Rajasthan.
Key updates-
- The new document will provide for innovations for the benefit of cultivators.
- Organic farming would be promoted in a big way.
- On August 14, Tamil Nadu became the third state after Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh to have a separate agricultural budget.
- The tradition of having an exclusive budget for agriculture was started by Karnataka in 2011-12 in order to give a focused approach to the sector.
- Andhra Pradesh followed in 2013-14, terming it as a policy paper on agriculture.
- Though states like Telangana, and Bihar too had similar plans, they did not take off due to various legal and technical reasons.
- Article 202 of the Constitution of India enables states to issue an estimated statement of receipts and expenditure for a financial year (commonly referred to as ‘Budget’ or ‘Annual Financial Statement’).
- Read in conjunction with List II entries (State), it is apparent that the Constitution confers wide ranging powers to states to make/amend laws on ‘agriculture’ related activities.
- However, Telangana had backed out of a plan of having a separate agri budget citing Rule 150 of the legislative guidelines which states that only receipts and expenditure were treated as budget.
Source: The Hindu
