- Home Deptt’s SRE grants too get House nod
Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 25: The Legislative Assembly today passed the budget for 2025-26 and supplementary grants for 2024-25 in the form of Appropriation bills. The House also passed Demands for Grants amounting to Rs 231.53 crore for Security Related Expenditure (SRE) of the Home Department.
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The Appropriation bills were moved by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who also holds charge of the Finance Department and had presented maiden budget of Jammu and Kashmir as the Union Territory on March 7, and were passed by the Assembly unanimously.
The BJP MLAs had staged walkout in the Assembly on the issue of daily wagers when the Appropriation bills were taken for the pass motion. However, BJP MLA Balwant Singh Mankotia returned to the House but wanted to raise an issue when the bills had been passed.
As Mankotia insisted on keeping his point saying he has given prior notice for it, Speaker Abdul Rahim Rather told the BJP MLA that the Appropriation bills have already been passed.
The Legislative Assembly nod to the Appropriation bills will authorize the Government to withdraw funds from the Union Territory’s Consolidation Fund for the financial years of 2024-25 and 2025-26.
The Appropriation bill for the financial year 2024-25 (LA Bill No. 2 of 2025) and the Appropriation Bill for 2025-26 (LA Bill No. 3 of 2025) were both introduced by the Chief Minister and were passed by voice vote by the House when Omar moved the pass motion.
Omar presented his maiden budget in the Assembly on March 7 which was debated by the MLAs for three days followed by his reply. Later, the grants of the CM’s departments were also debated in the House for three days followed by his reply. Grants of the departments of all other Ministers were also debated after which the budget was passed.
The Legislative Assembly has to give nod to the budget before March 31. The new budgetary provisions will come into effect from April 1.
Prior to this, the Assembly also passed grants of the Home Department’s Security Related Expenditure which were introduced in the House by the Chief Minister.
These grants included demand number two (SRE part) for 2025-26 amounting to Rs 162.21 crore and supplementary demands for grants for 2024-2025 amounting to Rs 69.32 crore.
Since the matter pertained to the Home Department, no cut motions were submitted by the members of the House, and there was no discussion.
After nod to the budget and SRE grants, the Legislative Assembly adjourned for 12 days break in view of Eid and Navratra festivals. The Assembly will now resume its sitting on April 7.
The House will have only three sittings on April 7, 8 and 9 before being adjourned sine die on completion of the budget session. The session will have 21 sittings.
Private member’s bills and private member’s resolutions are scheduled to be taken up during last three days of the Assembly session.
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