THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Finance Minister K M Mani got a breather when Speaker G Karthikeyan ruled out the allegations of leakage of budget details before the Budget presentation.In the ruling made on Tuesday, Karthikeyan said that the reports appeared in some newspapers that the pension age of government employees would be raised to 56 and marriage assistance to the daughters of widows would be hiked to `20,000 could not be considered as a leak.In view of the reports and allegations of leakage of budget proposals, the Chair had called for a probe and submitted an explanation. Following this, the Finance Minister submitted a detailed report on the allegations.The details about the social security pension and the amounts figured in the budget proposals were not same. But the report on the pension age was discussed earlier in the media as it was a policy matter of the Government. In these circumstances, the mediapersons might have assumed that the proposal would be in the budget, the Speaker ruled.He also pointed out that there were allegations of budget leakage in the past too.On March 24,1995, and June 21, 2006, such reports had appeared in the media before the presentation of the budget. In those cases too, the allegations were ruled out by the Speakers. The similarities of two proposals appeared in the media might be a coincidence and the allegations were not objective, he ruled.In another ruling, Karthikeyan said that former Speaker M Vijayakumar’s statement, casting aspersions on his acceptance of the resignation of CPM MLA R Selvaraj, was unfortunate.He said that it was on March 9 at 8.45 a.m. that Selvaraj came to the Speaker’s residence and handed over the resignation letter under Section 169(1) of the Rules of Procedure. As he was submitting the resignation in a voluntary manner (Section 169(2)), the Speaker had to accept it instantly.He pointed out that since 1957, 35 members had resigned from the House so far. In all the cases, the Speakers of those times had followed the same procedure.He pointed out that M Vijayakumar had also acted in the same manner during his tenure as Speaker, when George Eden and K P Mammu Master resigned.
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