Voted and Charged Expenditures In India

The budget shows the estimated receipts and expenditure of the upcoming Financial Year.  After the budget is presented to the house (parliament), the government needs its approval to draw even one rupee from the Consolidated Fund of India. This approval comes by voting, which means that the Budget proposals must be passed by the Parliament. However, there are some charges which essentially have to be paid by the Government and for those charges no voting takes place. Thus, the expenditure embodied in the Budget Documents is of two types:

• The sums required for charged expenditures. These are non-votable.
• The sums required for other expenditures as mentioned in the Budget Documents. These are votable.

Charged Expenditures or Non-Votable Charges

Non-votable charges are called Charged Expenditures; and no voting takes place for the amount involved in these expenditures for their withdrawal from Consolidated Fund of India. This means that they have to be paid in any case, whether the budget is passed or not passed. Following are the charged expenditures:

• Salary and Allowances of the President, Speaker / Deputy speaker of Lok Sabha, Chairman/ Deputy chairman of Rajya Sabha, Salaries and Allowances of Supreme Court judges, Pensions of Supreme Court as well as High Court Judges, Salaries and Allowances of CAG, Lok Pal
• Debt charges of Government of India.

The above expenditures cannot be voted because; these payments are deemed to be guaranteed by the state. Although voting does not take place on such charges, discussion can take place in any house of the parliament. The demand for grant for these charges is also made on recommendation of the president. (Article 113)

Here we should not that retainer of Attorney General or Solicitor General is NOT a charged expenditure upon Consolidated Fund of India. They are paid a fee which comes from the budgetary allocations of Department of Legal Affairs, which itself though comes from consolidated fund but is a votable charge. Further, while salary of High Court Judges is charged from Consolidated Fund of States, their pension comes from Consolidated Fund of India.

Votable / Voted Expenditures

The Votable part is actual Budget. The expenditures in the Budget are in the forms of Demand for Grants. There Budget also presents ways and means – how the government would be recovering the expenditures. Generally, the demands for Grants of each and every ministry are made separately in the Budget documents and each demand for grant has the provisions under its different heads.