Economical campaign: Discretionary grants of CM, ministers to be cut, decision likely today in Cabinet meeting
Punjab E News: For the second time in the current year, the Punjab government is going to cut the funds of the discretionary quota of chief minister and cabinet ministers. It is likely to get the green signal in the cabinet meeting today.
Under the campaign, the AAP government is taking such steps to reduce its expenditure. However, this decision will force the ministers to distribute the funds.
According to the details, the chief minister’s discretionary grant is being reduced from Rs 50 crore per annum to Rs 37 crore per annum, while the discretionary grant to cabinet ministers is planned to be reduced from Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 1 crore from the current Rs 1.5 crore. When AAP came to power, cabinet ministers used to get an annual discretionary grant of Rs 3 crore and in the first phase, the grant was reduced to Rs 1.5 crore per annum.
It is likely to be reduced from Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 1 crore in the cabinet meeting. During the Congress government, the grant of discretionary quota of cabinet ministers has also been Rs 5 crore annually. During the last year of the Congress rule, the then chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi’s quota of discretionary grants was Rs 200 crore.
The Channi government had increased it twice to bring the quota to Rs 200 crore per annum.
The AAP government had released the discretionary quota funds very late during the first financial year. The Cabinet had approved a policy for allocation of discretionary quota grants to chief ministers and cabinet ministers for 2022-23. Many ministers are also quite disappointed from within due to the possibility of further cuts on the discretionary quota as they had the same grant to fund social and public welfare works. Cabinet ministers will now have to strangulate their hands for public welfare works.