Then Maharashtra chief minister AR Antulay acknowledged this inconvenience and from 1980, the proposals were given in suitcases, which were highly coveted.
As Maharashtra finally moves from suitcases to tablets and pen-drives to distribute the annual budget proposals, it marks the end of a tradition set by pragmatism.
Annual budgets were usually given to 367 legislators and 200-odd employees of the planning and Finance department and legislative staff in suitcases.
The tradition was set when in the late '70s, Keshavrao Dhondge Patil – a Peasants and Workers party legislator – complained about the inconvenience of having to lug around the proposals. A pedant, who was mostly in the Opposition, Patil would meticulous pore over the budget papers (which would be in the form of multiple bound volumes) to raise pertinent questions in the House.
Then Maharashtra chief minister AR Antulay acknowledged this inconvenience and from 1980, the proposals were given in suitcases, which were highly coveted.
Now the objective is to go paperless from the next year's budget, and legislators or their personal assistants will no longer have to rush to queue up to collect the suitcases after the Finance Minister's presentation.
A section of legislators believe it will be a loss to the distributors of suitcases, but gain for the suppliers of tablets. And seeing how coveted the suitcases were -- legislators were keen to collect best brands that could be enlisted for a family vacation – it will be interesting to observe how tablets raise the stakes.
A committee headed by state Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar will meet on Thursday to decide a roadmap to shift to tablets and pen drives.
Last year, the government installed monitors on the desk of legislators to help them access the day's agenda and necessary papers.
BJP legislator Atul Bhatkhalkar, who is the member of the Mungantiwar-led committee, said, "It is high time that the government moves to tablets and pen drives to provide access to the annual budget and related data. Even smaller states such as Nagaland have already introduced this. It will not only reduce expenditure incurred on printing and purchase of suitcases, but make the entire exercise e friendly.''
The state finance department officer said that cost is immaterial when the government is aggressively pushing it's digital policy.
And a committee member clarified that the tablets will not come in suitcases – the legislators will have to settle for simple cloth or paper bags to carry them.
Suitcase saga
In the late ‘70s, legislator Keshavrao Dhondge Patil complained about the inconvenience of lugging bound volumes of budget papers
From 1980, on the orders of then chief minister AR Antulay, the proposals were distributed in suitcases
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