Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on Wednesday addressed the media and informed that the general budget and railway budget will be merged and presented as a single budget from 2017. However, the functional autonomy of the railway budget will be maintained, Jaitley confirmed. The budget’s date has not been announced for 2017 as it depends on the Assembly session.
Jaitley, while briefing the media, said that the practice was adopted because railway budget used to be higher that general budget but things have changed with time. “Now there are several departments whose budget is higher than that of railway budget, namely defence,” Jaitley said.
