The House of Representatives on Wednesday endorsed the national budget with a majority vote after all ruling parties, including those who had serious reservations with the annual financial plan, agreed to endorse it without revision.

The ruling Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP) and CPN (Unified Socialist) had been vocally criticising the budget right from May 29, when it was presented in Parliament. Some lawmakers of the two parties had even threatened to shoot down the budget if it was not revised. Although some Nepali Congress leaders and even ministers in the Dahal Cabinet had demanded a revision of the budget, Finance Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat had remained adamant against any amendment.

With no hope of any revision, the JSP and the Unified Socialist backtracked on their earlier stance and agreed to back the budget as it is. Both the parties on Wednesday morning had issued a whip to their lawmakers to vote in favour of the budget.

Rajendra Pandey, vice-chair of the CPN (Unified Socialist) who was most vocal against the budget, said his party decided to backtrack after the assurance from the prime minister that the government would find ways to address their concerns.

“We have found that the government took our concerns seriously,” he told the Post. “He has assured that major concerns raised by the lawmakers will be incorporated in the budget.”

He had been saying his party would vote against the budget if the decision to divert huge chunks of the budget to the districts of top leaders of the Congress and the CPN (Maoist Centre) is not corrected. Huge amounts of development budget have been allocated to Gorkha, Dadeldhura and Nuwakot, the home districts or constituencies of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba and Finance Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat, respectively.

Similarly, the JSP had been complaining that the national budget had discriminated against Madhesh by allocating disproportionately lower amounts. However, the party also voted in favour of the budget. “We agreed to vote for the budget after the prime minister promised to allocate more funds for Madhesh,” Pradeep Yadav, chief whip of the party, told the Post.

Prime Minister Dahal himself had visited JSP leaders who were holding a meeting on the premise of the Parliament and asked them to support the budget.

Cross-party lawmakers for the last few weeks had been questioning the purpose of discussing the budget for weeks if there would be no changes.

The national budget is presented in the House on Jestha 15 (May 29 this year) every year. First, both the Houses discuss the budget’s theoretical aspects for around a week. This is followed by topic-wise discussions on funds allocations for each ministry before the budget is put to a vote. The entire process takes over a month. However, there has been a practice whereby not even a comma or full stop is revised. Any amendment to the budget is seen as a failure of the government.

For decades there had been practice of endorsing the budget through a voice vote. However, on the demand from the main opposition CPN-UML, a proper ballot voting was used on Wednesday for the voting for the first time.

A total of 147 lawmakers voted in favour of the appropriation bill (budget) although just 138 votes were enough to pass the budget in the 275-strong House. Since the political parties in the government together have around 154 lawmakers in the lower house, Wednesday’s voting result suggests growing discontent with the Dahal government.

Prime Minister Dahal secured 268 votes when he faced the vote of confidence for the first time in January. In the second vote of confidence in March, the support declined to 172 votes, which further plunged in Wednesday’s voting. “The result of the votes on Wednesday clearly shows Dahal is gradually losing his support in the Parliament,” said Mahesh Bartaula, CPN-UML whip.