Going the green way: No hard copies of Budget 2016!

New Delhi: As part of green effort of Finance Ministry as well as making a departure from the tradition, the central government decided not to hand out hard copies of General Budget 2016-17 after it was announced in the Parliament on Monday.

Usually, the general budget, an exhaustive document, was handed over to journalists in the parliament building from designated counters every year after it was presented in the Lok Sabha.

This year, however, the government decided not to distribute hard copies of the budget to Media houses as part of its bid to go green and save trees.

The general budget runs into hundreds of pages, and has several booklets including the details of allocations to different ministries, plan and revenue expenditure and other financial details.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, while presenting the budget, announced allocation of Rs.9,000 crore for the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Campaign) in the country.

The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, which was officially launched on October 2, 2014, is a national campaign of the central government, covering 4,041 statutory cities and towns, to clean the streets, roads and other infrastructure.

(With IANS inputs)