26 Years Ago

The ordinance budget for 1995/96 which Finance Minister Bharat Mohan Adhikari unveiled last week is clearly a budget with a difference. Equally, the biggest ever national budget which directed at the poor and dispossessed may, which justification, be termed as an election budget which is precisely what it has been by the political opposition. Yet, there is no getting away from the fact that the “populist” budget presented by the UML government, presently in a caretaker capacity, is the end result of the process triggered by former Prime Minister G. P. Koirala’s decision for a snap poll last year. That development not only witnessed the exit of the government which he headed but in fact created a hung parliament and set up a wobbly minority government in its place, the first-ever,  in fact,  established by Commutation in this country. People’s Review, 20 July 1995