With people reposing faith in the UPA and voting for stability, this is the government's chance to fulfill its promises, ensure growth and development of the country, check runaway prices, and offer succour to the aam aadmi.
The biggest challenge before Chidambaram, who will be presenting his eighth budget, would be to keep every constituent happy, arrest decelerating economic growth and bring down fiscal deficit to committed level of 4.8 per cent of the gross domestic product.
The major focus of this year's Economic Survey was on pushing economic growth, which has been projected by the Central Statistical Organisation at 5 per cent for this fiscal, sharply lower than the original estimate of 7.6 per cent (+/- 0.25 per cent).
An IAS officer of 1973 batch of the Gujarat cadre, Chawla also hold additional charge of the Department of Economic Affairs and the Department of Financial Services.
He said he had achieved a fair measure of success in stablising India's economy and aimed to make it the third-biggest after the US and China.
West Bengal, the chief minister said, cannot be compared with other states and despite all hurdles it had an increased revenue generation over the last three years from Rs 21,000 crore (Rs 210 billion) to Rs 40,000 crore (Rs 400 billion).
"We request and seek cooperation from all parties, including the Opposition, for smooth functioning of both Houses to make this session fruitful," Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Ananth Kumar said.
In a major jolt to India's solar energy programme, the Rajasthan government might cancel the 4,000-Mw solar UMPP (ultra mega power project), which was expected to come up near Sambhar Lake.
With the fall of Congress, Chidambaram's political graph too started moving southwards.
The office of former prime minister Manmohan Singh may have taken a special interest to try and keep afloat Vijay Mallya's ailing Kingfisher Airlines against the run of play, e-mails and letters claiming this and accessed by CNN-News18 indicate.
Modi government's story of five years with regard to equity allocation for PSUs shows that it may have allowed a large part of its resources to be wasted. This is also a worrying reflection of the government's inability to take hard decisions - whether they pertain to privatisation or forcing weak public-sector banks to wind down their operations, says A K Bhattacharya.
Principal economic advisor, Ila Patnaik, is coordinating the work on Economic Survey 2013-14.
Maybe the new methods of measuring GDP helped us get an accurate picture.
The Centre has to bear the maximum burden of borrowing NSSF loans to the tune of Rs 1 lakh crore.
Let it gradually pull itself out of international routes and focus on linking remote towns and cities.
Not only is Modi's India not the shining land of dynamism and prosperity that he promised -- though it may be that, for some people, in a few years from now -- but socially it has the positively regressive tendencies that were entirely predictable.
The government now ends its mandate with reaffirmation in the vote-on-account of the same goals, for which it claims to have a clear line of sight.
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