Budget 2018: Why India merged Railway, Union Budget in 2017

Railway Budget 2018

BUDGET 2018 - On 21 September 2016, Government of India approved the merger of the Railway Budget with the Union budget of India, and thus came to end — a 92-year-old practice of separate rail and general budgets. The decision of merger was taken along with advancing the date of the Union Budget in the Parliament under the process of budgetary reforms taken up by the government.

Earlier, NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India), which constituted a committee headed by economist and NITI Aayog member Bibek Debroy, produced a whitepaper and recommended that the British-era practise should be phased out. The recommendations were forwarded to the Railway Ministry, after which former railway minister Suresh Prabhu, in a letter, urged Arun Jaitley to merge the Railway Budget with the general budget for the long-term interest of both the railways and the country’s economy. After raising the matter in the Rajya Sabha, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley constituted a committee to chart out the future course of action.

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