LS applies guillotine; passes bill to allow govt expenditure for FY25

NEW DELHI — The Lok Sabha on Monday approved about INR 140 lakh crore expenditure demands of different ministries of the central government, completing two-thirds of the legislative approvals needed for the full Budget for 2024-25.

The lower house, which had last week debated on the Budget, approved the demands for grants as well as the Appropriation (No 2) Bill 2024, which authorises the government to use certain sums out of the Consolidated Fund of India for the services of the financial year 2024-25.

This followed a guillotine being applied after taking up a discussion on demands for grants for four ministries — Railways, Education, Health and Fisheries.

The Lok Sabha will now discuss the Finance Bill (No 2), 2024, which essentially contains the tax proposals of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget for 2024-25.

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The Rajya Sabha is also parallelly discussing demands for grants for four other ministries — agriculture, new and renewable energy, cooperation and housing and urban affairs. It will also discuss the Finance Bill, but as per the Constitution, it can only return such bills to the Lower House.

The budgetary exercise will be complete after the passage of the Finance Bill (No 2), 2024, by the Lok Sabha.

While the guillotine literally is a large, weighted blade used for executing a condemned person, in legislative parlance, it means to bunch together and fast-track the passage of financial business. It is a fairly common procedural exercise in the Lok Sabha during the Budget Session.