THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: This is not the first time budgets have been leaked at the Centre or in States but invariably Speakers have ruled out breach of privilege, whether it be the leak of the Union or Railway budget. Former Lok Sabha secretary-general P. D. T. Achary told DC that Budget leaks would not attract provisions of the breach of the oath of secrecy or the rules of business of the House. However, he believes there is a breach of privilege of elected lawmakers, mandated by the Constitution to be privy to the annual financial statement (Budget) when it is presented in Parliament or the State Assembly. He was referring to social media leak of Finance Minister Thomas Isaac’s budget.
It is a privilege which the Constitution bestows on the Legislature. In the case of Parliament, the Budget is presented on the direction of the President and Union Cabinet gets a preview on the eve of the Budget presentation. The entire staff members involved in making the Union Budget are detained in the North Block for nearly a month and allowed to leave only after the Budget is presented. In Thiruvananthap-uram, the pre-budget exercise and budget speech preparation were entrusted with a team, whose members were under strict orders not to share information with the public. The budget speech was sent to the Government press around 4 on Friday morning and nearly 400 employees worked indoors to print the Budget, some 500 copies initially. They were allowed to leave the office only at 9 am after Dr Isaac reached the House.
Secrecy is the norm and the Finance Minister owes vicarious responsibility to the House, to which he is answerable. The official, who leaked the document, is answerable to the Minister, said Mr Achary. It is the legislature and its members that pass finance bills and appropriation bills and so it is their privilege, which has been infringed by the leak, says Mr Achary, adding that the right vested in the House to dispose of the Budget is a privilege. The Budget leak in Kerala does not appear grave because no tax proposals were involved unlike at the Centre, where crucial tax info could shake the markets. Which is why the annual financial statements are done in secrecy, said Mr Achary.
It was the late G. Venugopal, who lost his Government accreditation for leaking the crucial tax proposal in Finance Minister C. Achutha Menon’s budget during the EMS ministry in 1957-59. The pro-RSP union leader P Sekhara Pillai spirited out a hand-composed copy of the crucial tax proposal in his lunch box from the Government Press and gave it to Venuopal, reporter of pro-RSP daily, Kaumudy. The newspaper published the tax proposals even before Achutha Menon had read out his Budget speech. The Opposition saw it as a collective failure of the Cabinet and demanded its resignation. A case was charged against those involved in the leak but it dragged on for a while before going down the bin of history. RSP national leader T J Chandrachoodan, who recalled the incident, rued the plight of Dr Isaac, who cruised along, punctuating his speech with M T excerpts. “It’s a lapse anyway”, he said.
