Lok Sabha poll decision likely on Dec 10

A crucial meeting on the Union Budget called by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on December 10 may indicate whether the government prefers to go to the Lok Sabha polls in April after presenting the budget or pushes for a vote-on-account in December itself in order to hold the elections in February. Sources in the Prime Minister's Office said Dr Manmohan Singh's meeting with the finance ministry team, led by Finance Minister P Chidambaram, has been deliberately fixed for two days after the results of the assembly elections in five states are declared (for Jammu and Kashmir, the counting is on December 28), as the Congress leadership as well as the United Progressive Alliance members would have by then decided on the timing of the Lok Sabha polls. Finance ministry bureaucrats, however, are not expecting the Union Budget to be presented before going to the polls and as such are busy getting ready the budgetary calculations for 2009-10 for the next government to decide on. Expenditure Secretary Sushma Nath issued a circular letter recently asking the varius ministries and departments to finalise their demands for the next budget. Revenue Secretary P V Bhide has also got the tax revenue collection figures ready. Economic Affairs Secretary Ashok Chawla, however, has asked all concerned to wait for a 'green signal' from the PM on December 10 to finalise the budget papers. Parliament, which went into a long recess on October 24 after just six sittings, will be resuming its session from December 10. With only 10 sittings listed for the resumed session that ends on December 22, the finance ministry would be hard put to prepare and get approved a vote-on-account in such a short time. The government appears disinclined to hold any further session before going to the polls, and as such it has to get all financial business up to June approved by Parliament in this very truncated session in December, sources in the parliamentary affairs ministry said.