Had it not been for Speaker Sreeramakrishnan’s ‘timely’ intervention, it would have been a record-setting day for finance minister Thomas Isaac. And, a huge portion of the Budget presentation was spent on listing out names of almost all the beneficiaries of different schemes.
Isaac, who announced a Rs 3000-crore package to save Kerala’s white elephant KSRTC, listed out the names of the beneficiaries of different schemes and allocations, like a tireless KSRTC conductor who calls out all the stops, though it is not mandatory for a finance minister to mention such details.
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Isaac's obsession with listing out names even prompted the Speaker to express his displeasure. At one point, the Speaker stopped Isaac from reading out names of 100 school listed for upgrading.
“Do you have to read all the names,” a visibly annoyed Speaker asked.
Place names took off a large share of Isaac's long speech and many thought he would break Oommen Chandy's record of longest budget speech.
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More importantly, Isaac could have even escaped the embarrassment caused by opposition protest over allegations of Budget leak if he had chosen to skip some names.