Inter Mission: Bet on Jas to depart from the script

NEW DELHI: In March ’91, while presenting the interim budget for the purpose of vote-on-account, Yashwant Sinha who was the then finance minister signalled one of the most significant reform measures in the country — disinvestment.
As Mr Sinha himself said quietly once, few can recall that he was the one to kick off disinvestment which was a dirty word then.
The intention to unload 20% of the government’s equity in selected PSUs to mutual funds and financial and investment institutions was announced in Mr Sinha’s speech on that occasion. It was also to transfer the proceeds of the national savings scheme to the Bharat Bachat Bank which was proposed to be set up.
That year marked the first time that an interim budget and a full budget was presented by ministers of two different political parties. Manmohan Singh who presented the full budget in ’91 also joined the list of those finance ministers who sought the approval of Parliament for a vote-on-account, later in ’97, during which he confined himself to detailing the achievements of the Rao government and how the country had been pulled back from the brink of disaster in ’91.
Over the last five decades, finance ministers have chosen to stick to the script by stating their intentions, facts and figures about the economy, but steered clear of announcing changes on the taxation front. Jaswant Singh has, however, been one up on his predecessors, having carried out changes on indirect taxes well before the presentation of the interim budget. Bets are being laid that Mr Singh may choose to depart from the script a bit.

Interim budgets have been presented by TT Krishnamachari. Morarji Desai has had the distinction of having done the maximum budgets (10), YB Chavan, HM Patel, R Venkataraman, besides of course, Yashwant Sinha who has done it twice. In fact, the country’s first finance minister, RK Shanmukham Chetty, started off his budget speech by talking of how he had presented an interim budget for free India a few months back. The allusion was due to the fact that the budget for April 1946 to March 1947 was adopted by the then interim government in March 1946.
Yashwant Sinha who was to present yet another vote-on-account in ’98 under the shadow of a slow down in the economy only announced his government’s decision to bring a Constitutional amendment to give effect to a scheme for assigning 29% of the gross proceeds of almost all central taxes to the states by the Centre and additional assistance to states.
The finance bill introduced by the minister only sought to continue the existing tax structure for a full year.