Parliament is set to go into recess this week and will convene again on April 12th. Before going into recess, both houses will have completed general discussions on the budget. Once the recess begins, it’s time to go beyond the big budget numbers and into greater detail. The detailed estimates by various ministries (sometimes running into a few hundred pages), of their budgeted expenditures in the next financial year (April 2010-March 2011) will be examined by the various Parliamentary Standing Committees. When Parliament reconvenes, the Committees will table their reports on these demands for grants and the Lok Sabha will then begin more detailed discussions. Due to lack of time however, such detailed discussions take place only for 3-4 ministries – the rest are voted on without discussion. For a more detailed overview of the entire budget process, see our document “The Union Budget – A Primer” For an overview of the budget documents, as well as a guide to finding the information that you want, see “How to Read the Union Budget”
Around 1400 reports have been tabled by the PAC since the first Lok Sabha till end of 14th Lok Sabha.
In terms of absolute numbers, the largest number of reports were tabled during the 5th Lok Sabha (1971-77). However, in terms of the average number of reports presented in the duration of a single Lok Sabha, the 6th Lok Sabha is the highest. The fewest number of PAC reports were tabled during the 1st Lok Sabha (25 reports over all and 5 reports on an average per year). 
