Ukhrul, Feb 27: The Meghalaya Cabinet has approved as many as six amendment Bills, which will be introduced for consideration in the upcoming Assembly’s budget session, to be held from February 28.
These include Meghalaya State Investment Promotion and Facilitation Bill 2025, Meghalaya Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, Meghalaya Goods and Services Tax Amendment Bill 2025, Water Prevention and Control of Pollution Amendment Act, Meghalaya Police Act and Meghalaya Registration of Birth and Death Amendment Rules.
Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said the government had amended the Meghalaya State Investment Promotion and Facilitation Bill 2025 and the same will be introduced during the Assembly session.
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Regarding the amendment of the Meghalaya Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, Sangma said, “Again this was brought up earlier where during the period of the 15th finance commission, the deficit was allowed to be brought up to 3.5%. This is throughout the country as per the Government of India and Reserve Bank norms.”
On the augmentation of the Corpus fund, Conrad Sangma said, “We had increased the Corpus fund which was at Rs 500 crores to Rs 1005 crores and this is simply because the fact that the budget provisions which were there in this Corpus fund was limited, so the provisions had to be increased, the cash is available with us but for us to spent the cash, we need the provision of the budget. So therefore, this is being created because we have received additional funds from taxes, from different funds coming in from the CSS and so on.”
He also informed that the Meghalaya Goods and Services Tax Amendment Bill 2025 was approved in line with the decision of the GST Council and the amendment of the Water Prevention and Control of Pollution Amendment Act was also done in line with the Central Act.
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On the decision to amend the Meghalaya Police Act, 2010, Sangma said, “The Supreme Court ruling had stated “Once he has been selected for the job, he should have a minimum tenure of at least 2 years irrespective of his date of super nomination, this was the court order. However, in the police act that we had made in 2010, which was before this decision of the Supreme Court, this particular provision was not incorporated in the police act, which means that we were following it, but the act had to be amended to put that part into the Meghalaya Police Act.”
Further, Sangma said the Meghalaya Registration of Birth and Death Amendment Rules was also approved in line with the provisions from the Central Government.
“It is very simple, the rationale is the amendments are being done to eliminate inconsistencies in names, dates, and addresses. It is nothing but streamlining the administrative part of the registration process,” he stated.
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(Newmai News Network)