Calcutta, March 5: One imponderable has been put to rest: Bengal will have a budget for the coming financial year.

The Mamata Banerjee government will place its first full-fledged budget on March 23 after the session opens on March 15 — a day later than scheduled, probably because the original date coincided with the Nandigram firing anniversary.

“The state government will this time place its full-fledged budget on March 23,” said Speaker Biman Banerjee.

The Left Front government had placed a vote-on-account budget in March last year to get the administration’s expenditure for the first four months of the current financial year approved by the legislature.

On the expiry of the first four months, the Mamata government placed another vote-on-account budget for two more months. After that, the new government did not table a full budget, though some departmental budgets were placed in the House.

Writers’ Buildings sources said that the finance department, under its new secretary H.K. Dwivedi, has assimilated data from all departments for putting together the budget.

The budget speech, which will be delivered by finance minister Amit Mitra, is in the process of being finalised.

“The administrative process is complete. The finance department, recovering from a delay of nearly three weeks because of a change of secretaries (previous secretary C.M. Bachhawat sought and got a transfer in early January this year), started work around the middle of January. However, the administrative process was completed around 10 days ago,” said a Writers’ source.

The delay in presenting the Union budget, now scheduled on March 16, because of the Assembly elections gave Bengal a little more time. “The deferred Union budget gave us around a fortnight’s extra time,” an official said.

A senior bureaucrat said the state budget would have “few surprises”, though allocations for departments working in rural development will be “substantially” increased, especially in view of the panchayat polls set for next year.

Governor M.K. Narayanan deferred the date of commencement of the budget session by a day following a request from state industries minister Partha Chatterjee, who also oversees the parliamentary affairs department.

The month-long budget session, which was earlier scheduled to commence from March 14, will begin a day later.

Although no official reason was given for the decision to defer the session by a day, Trinamul Congress sources have pointed out that the Nandigram firing anniversary falls on March 14 and the chief minister and other ministers could be preoccupied with related programmes.

“Mamatadi every year commemorates the killing of 14 persons in police firing in Nandigram, which took place on March 14, 2007. This year, too, any exception is unlikely as she is very sentimental about the March 14 killings,” a close aide said.

On the chief minister’s directive, minister Chatterjee this morning called on the governor at Raj Bhavan and placed the request to defer the session by a day, officials at Writers’ said.

“Although the budget session was scheduled to begin on March 14, the governor today issued a fresh order on convening the House session on March 15,” Speaker Banerjee said.

Former Speaker Hashim Abdul Halim said: “The governor can always defer or advance the date for commencement of the House session under Article 174 of the Constitution but it never happened during my 29-year tenure.”