IMPHAL, February 25: Altogether 34 supplementary demands for grant amounting to rupees 532.21 crore, for the fiscal year 2013-14, was passed by the house unanimously in the second day of the ongoing seventh session of the 10 Manipur Legislative Assembly.
Before passing the supplementary grants, Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh moved a general discussion motion.
Remarkably, opposition leader and AITC MLA Dr Ibohalbi, was the only legislator who had took part in the general discussion.
Placing his observation during the discussion, he maintained that in the history of Manipur Legislative Assembly the demands for supplementary grants are usually passed by unanimously without any objection. A trend according to him has been around four decades now.
Drawing the attention of the house, he suggested the house to adopt a different strategy slightly deviating from conventional decision towards the development of the people while passing such grants.
The opposition leader claimed that he finds it hard to comprehend on the need for supplementary grants which is a revised estimate in addition to the budget estimate, when the state always failed to utilise funds.
However with the supplementary grants being necessitate, all the departments should give their extra efforts to overcome its backlog. He also further observed that sectors like Agriculture, fishery, Health sector etc should execute extra work.
In response to the Ibohalbi’s observations, Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh, assured to complete the Khuga and Thoubal Multipurpose Project within the next fiscal year 2014-15.
He asserted that the supplementary demands for grants is included payment of Government employees, regularisation of Part timer employees, implementation of 6th Pay commission for Municipal Council and Ngar Panchayat. “We acknowledge their demands are genuine however the Government was apprehensive and unable to fulfil all the demands at once keeping in mind the financial meltdown faced in 2003”, said Ibobi.
With no other member of the house not joining the discussion the grants was passed unanimously with a voice vote.
Meanwhile, a sum of 2746,79,84,333 crore grant in advance to be incurred during April-July 2014 was also passed today. The vote of accounts was moved in the house on February 24, 2014.
At the same time, two appropriation bill including the Manipur appropriation (No.1) and (No.2) bill, 2014 was also introduced on the floor of the house by Chief Minister Okram Ibobi.