The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has reported significant financial irregularities in the Union government's FY25 accounts, including ~12,754.47 crore in misclassification and ~54,282.32 crore in outstanding utilisation certificates, with some dating back to 1985-86.
As the government moves to revamp India's securities legislation, unifying three different laws into the Securities Markets Code (SMC), regulatory experts and market insiders have raised concerns on potential funding challenges for the stock market regulator.
Experts said that earmarking of funds for public health at par with national security indicates a key policy shift.
Three laws passed in Parliament could boost central revenues, reshape GST cess flows, shift MGNREGA costs to states and create new budget headroom ahead of the 2026-2027 Union Budget, points out A K Bhattacharya.
The government is likely to give a subsidy of Rs 30,000-35,000 crore to state-run oil companies - Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum (BPCL), and Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL) - to compensate for losses incurred from selling LPG at below cost over the past 15 months, according to a senior official.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday said she declined the offer of the Bharatiya Janata Party to contest elections pleading that she did not have the 'kind of funds' required for fighting the Lok Sabha polls.
Hours after Congress leader Manish Tewari on Thursday said the government might get the Digital Data Protection Bill classified as a money bill, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw refuted the charge and termed it a "normal bill".
The government has approved the 'Terms of Reference' for the 16 Finance Commission, which makes recommendations on sharing of tax revenues between the Centre and states. The recommendations would cover a five-year period commencing April 1, 2026, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said on Wednesday, giving details about the decisions taken at the Cabinet meeting last evening. The commission would submit its report by October 31, 2025, Thakur said.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will set a record by presenting the sixth Budget in a row -- 5 annual Budgets and one interim -- a feat achieved so far only by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai. With the presentation of interim Budget on February 1, Sitharaman will surpass the records of her predecessors like Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram, and Yashwant Sinha, who had presented five budgets in a row. Desai, as Finance Minister, had presented five annual Budgets and one interim Budget between 1959-1964. The interim Budget 2024-25 to be presented by Sitharaman on February 1, will be a vote-on-account that will give the government authority to spend certain sums of money till a new government comes to office after the April-May general elections.
The affidavit was filed in response to a petition seeking a direction to declare the PM CARES Fund a 'State' under the Constitution to ensure transparency in its functioning.
The stormy second part of Budget Session continues. Both houses of Parliament have been facing continuous protests by opposition parties over issues like fuel price hike.
The bench did not agree to the contention of the lawyer that the fund has been created without following the schemes enumerated under Articles 266 and 267 (which deal with the contingency and the Consolidated Funds of India) of the Constitution.
The need for finding options for proper functioning of Parliament is of paramount importance as the frequency of the passage of Budgets and other economic Bills without discussion or debate has only increased in the last few years, notes A K Bhattacharya.
The parliamentary affairs minister also said the productivity of Lok Sabha was around 82 per cent and that of Rajya Sabha around 48 per cent.
The PM CARES Fund is not a Government of India fund and the amount collected by it does not go to the Consolidated Fund of India, the Delhi High Court has been informed.
In a far-reaching verdict, the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner and the election commissioners will be done by the President on the recommendation of a committee, comprising the Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the CJI, to maintain the "purity" of the electoral process.
The Bombay high court on Tuesday sought the Union government's reply to a petition seeking deletion of the name 'Prime Minister' from the PM CARES Fund trust and also deletion of the PM's photo as well as images of the national flag and the emblem of India from the trust's official website.
In an affidavit submitted before a division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice M S Karnik, PMO Under Secretary Pradeep Srivastava said the PM's photograph, name and national emblem were also used in the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund (PMNRF).
The government has reconstituted a high level committee for the disposal of enemy properties that have been left behind by those who migrated and took up citizenship of Pakistan and China.
The Bill seeks to create a welfare fund for farmers at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi has led from the front a campaign to woo farmers and downtrodden sections of the society.
The CAG has pulled up the union government for adopting an erroneous process of devolution of IGST to states and short-transfer of cesses to reserve funds, which resulted in under-reporting of deficit figures for the 2017-18 and 2018-19 fiscals. The Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST), which is levied on inter-state sale of goods and services, is shared between the Centre and states in the 50:50 ratio. In its report on the union government accounts tabled in Parliament, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) found that a sum of Rs 13,944 crore was left unapportioned and retained in the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI) in 2018-19, even though the amended IGST Act now provides for a process for ad-hoc apportionment of IGST.
The question on who should borrow from the market and whether the borrowing will be under two buckets should be decided by the GST Council, and not by the Centre. If there is no consensus, there has to be a vote, says A K Bhattacharya.
The Opposition intensified its noisy protests in Lok Sabha on Wednesday over Pegasus snooping, farm laws and other issues with some unruly members even hurling papers and torn placards in the House, but the government went ahead with its legislative agenda and three bills were passed amid the din.
'All regulatory agencies must be made Constitutional bodies like the Election Commission, the Supreme Court, and the CAG.' 'That way they will become independent of the minister,' recommends T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
There was the mistaken belief that there was no risk of a second wave anytime soon.
The Delhi high court on Friday advanced to December 10 the hearing on pleas to declare the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund a 'State' under the Constitution and a 'public authority' under the Right to Information Act to ensure transparency in its functioning.
The deadline of March 31 has been postponed till the apex court delivers its final judgment.
Opposing the Centre's stand that the PM CARES Fund was not a government fund, a lawyer told the Delhi High Court Wednesday that there was no factor to show that the fund was private in nature.
The capital markets regulator has incurred litigation expenditure in the range of Rs 4-5 crore (Rs 40-50 million) in each of the past three financial years, while such expenses could be even higher in the current fiscal ending this month.
Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf traces the journey of PM-CARES from its founding to finally admitting it is not a government fund.
The Congress, Left parties, Trinamool Congress and some others were in the forefront of this attack on the government, which is set to garner around Rs 7,900 crore through the decision.
Government is framing a rule that will make it compulsory for regulators like Sebi, Irdai and PFRDA to deposit a significant portion of their reserves into the Consolidated Fund of India.
'But can it afford to present a scenario within the existing legal framework of fiscal consolidation?', asks A K Bhattacharya.
After the GST Council's meeting in March, the Centre had sought views from Attorney General K K Venugopal -- who is the chief legal officer of the government -- on the legality of market borrowing by the council to make good any shortfall in the compensation fund. The AG in his view said there is no obligation on the central government to pay the GST compensation shortfall, according to the sources.
It is in no way a government of the economic Right. The Right is limited to religion and nationalism. The rest is as Left as the Congress or any other party, observes Shekhar Gupta.
The proposed measures aim to bring stricter norms to curb holding of illegal cash and mismanagement of unaccounted cash seized by the probe agencies during investigations.
The statutory status will provide a legal foundation to Aadhaar.
To make possible discretionary spending including capex and that on welfare, the government decided to borrow more than planned in FY21 -- Rs 12.7 trillion.
Employees joining companies after August and availing of the government benefits under the Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana (PMRPY) will also have to link their PF accounts with Aadhaar numbers.
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