FM to get party line on Budget

Inflationary trends and agrarian distress are among the issues set to dominate proceedings at Finance Minister P Chidambaram's pre-Budget discussion with the Congress Parliamentary Party at Sansad Bhawan on Thursday.

This is the first in a series of pre-Budget meetings that Chidambaram will hold with various interest groups, including labour unions, industrialists, farmers, and economists.

Sources said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the finance minister, and deputy chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia also held a meeting on the Budget.

The stage for a meeting with Congress MPs from the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha was set on Tuesday when AICC general secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh Ashok Gehlot and senior leader Mohsina Kidwai raised the issue of the rise in the prices of essential commodities at a Congress Working Committee meeting.

The Congress leaders asked the prime minister to take further steps to curb the price rise. The party was apparently trying to put the blame on the government for its failure to revive itself in Uttar Pradesh.

Of late, Congress leaders have been critical of the government on its handling of the price rise and the agrarian crisis. They want it to increase public investment in agriculture.

The Swaminathan Commission's recommendations, including the one for the setting up of an Indian Trade Organisation as a think tank to give inputs for negotiations on agriculture with the World Trade Organisation, "had to be implemented," said an AICC general secretary.

Only recently, Congress treasurer and MP Motilal Vora had raised in the Rajya Sabha the issue of targets and the purported lack of achievement for short-term farm credit at 7 per cent rate of interest.

Meanwhile, the team of officials assisting the finance minister in formulating Budget 2007-08 will see a fresh face on the revenue side as Baljit Matiyani, at present member of Central Board of Direct Taxes, has been given additional charge of chairperson, following the appointment of incumbent chairperson MH Kherawala as a member of Income Tax Settlement Commission at Mumbai.

The order for Kherawala's new assignment came on Tuesday. The team includes Expenditure Secretary Sanjiv Mishra, Finance Secretary Ashok Jha, Revenue Secretary KM Chandrasekhar and advisor to FM Parthasarthi Shome, and Chief Economic Adviser Ashok Lahiri, among others.

Another key official assisting in the Budget exercise, Central Board of Excise and Customs Chairperson VP Singh, has also recently taken over his new assignment.