Congress to move court if government issues ordinance on Uttarakhand Budget

NEW DELHI: The Congress has announced that it will move the Supreme Court if the Centre issues an ordinance to ‘nullify’ the ‘budget already passed’ by the Uttarakhand government.

A party source also said the Congress was planning to move the state high court on Friday against the nine party rebels who have sought a stay on their disqualification.

Insisting that state assembly had duly passed the budget with the stamp of approval by the Speaker and pointing out that the passage of the budget had not been challenged in any court, AICC spokesperson and senior lawyer Kapil Sibal told a news conference on Thursday: “We have got to know that the central government will issue an ordinance to allocate funds to Uttarakhand for the next fiscal. It is an attempt to nullify the budget the Harish Rawat-led government passed in the Uttarakhand assembly. If this happens, we will move court.”

Lashing out at the Modi government, he added: “The Union government cannot decide if the budget was passed by the assembly or not. The Centre has no business to interfere on state matters.” Terming that promulgation of any such ordinance would be “unprecedented and unconstitutional”, Sibal said: “I must congratulate (Arun) Jaitley. It is a first to his credit. The central government will decide whether budget in an assembly is passed or not!”

He accused the Centre of playing a political game as part of its attempts to destabilise the state government and questioned the Centre’s move to prorogue Parliament session.