Tamil Nadu govt to publish white paper on state’s finances on August 9; present Budget on August 13

Tamil Nadu Finance Minister P T R Palanivel Thiaga Rajan will on August 9 release a white paper on the state’s finances before presenting the revised Budget for the 2021-2022 fiscal on August 13. The white paper, which will run to 120 pages, is likely to throw much light on the “financial mismanagement” of the previous AIADMK Government which ruled Tamil Nadu from 2011 to 2021.

Thiaga Rajan, a former top banker who worked with internationally acclaimed institutions like Lehman Brothers and Standard Chartered, will be the first Finance Minister to present an e-budget.

Presentation of an e-budget will be the first step towards achieving a ‘paperless’ Tamil Nadu Assembly. The legislators will have to scroll through the PDF document on their screens as Thiaga Rajan flips through the pages reading out his maiden Budget speech.

Read | Tamil Nadu Assembly getting ready for e-budget presentation

In a departure from the tradition, Thiaga Rajan is believed to have written a major part of the speech that he will deliver while presenting the Budget, raising expectations about the tabling of the financial document. It is believed that the Budget speech will have announcements regarding some of the DMK’s poll promises like Rs 1,000 as “rightful money” for women head of households.

A notification from the Tamil Nadu Assembly Secretary K Sreenivasan said the “revised Budget” will be presented on August 13. The notification came minutes after the Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister M K Stalin took the decision to convene the much-awaited Budget Session on August 13, a day before the new government completes 100 days in office.

The Cabinet also approved the proposal to present an exclusive budget for Agriculture from this fiscal year. Sources said the white paper will have details about the debt of the Tamil Nadu government and reasons for revenue deficit and loss in the past few years.

Presentation of the white paper is one of the poll promises of the DMK which accused the AIADMK regime of “financial mismanagement.” Thiaga Rajan himself had said an effectively revenue neutral or revenue surplus state from 2004 to 2014 suddenly started having record revenue deficits each year and consequently exploding debt.

“After taking over the department, I realised that much of the financial mismanagement was the result of sleepwalking, not because they consciously made bad decisions. As things began to slide, nobody bothered to check what was happening and nobody even cared to correct the mistakes,” he had told DH in an interview in June.