Govt seeks Parliament nod for Rs. 1.03 L cr extra spending.

The Ministry of Finance has sought approval from Parliament to spend an additional amount of Rs 1.03 lakh crore through the first batch of supplementary demands for grants. The net cash outgo would be around Rs 20,948 crore including Rs 5,000 crore for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Rs 5,000 crore for National Employment Guarantee Fund and Rs 1,000 crore for Universal Service Obligation Fund for providing compensation to telecom service providers for services in rural areas.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley has also sought approval for providing funds of Rs 1,000 crore to Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd for Sovereign Strategic Crude Oil Reserve at Visakhapatnam, Mangalore and Pudur. An amount of Rs 500 crore has been provided for meeting expenditure on optical fibre cable-based network for defence services, while an amount of Rs 150 crore has been provided for additional capital infusion in India Post Payments Bank.

The ministry has also sought approval for Rs 40,000 crore as Ways and Means Advance for Food Corporation of India to meet the working capital requirements towards procurement of foodgrains for targeted Public Distribution System. An amount of Rs 31,957 crore has been sought for providing additional funds under National Highway Original Works and reclassification of Inter Account Transfer from Revenue to Capital section for Central Road Fund and Permanent Bridge Fees Fund.
Also, approval for Rs 2,000 crore each has been sought for additional assistance to states affected by natural calamities under National Disaster Response Fund and an additional fund for need based special assistance to states.

The Ministry of Finance has also sought approval for Rs 100 crore for advertisement and publicity of Income Disclosure Scheme and Disputes Resolution Scheme. Approval has been sought for an amount of Rs 80 crore for payment of arrears of subsidy on import of pulses along with Rs 1,562 crore for meeting expenditure towards grants for creation of capital assets under the government’s flagship scheme Swachh Bharat Mission.

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