The process for budget preparation for the year 2016-17 in the State of Himachal Pradesh was started on 7th January 2016 by Sh. Virbhadra Singh, Honourable Chief Minister by launching the web-portal for inviting suggestions from the general public. The portal is accessible from the official website of the HP Finance Department at http://himachal.nic.in/finance. Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister appreciated the efforts of the Finance Department and hoped that more suggestions would be come due to easy accessibility of this portal and that it would promote transparency, responsiveness and participatory approach in budget preparation.

Sh. P. Mitra, Chief Secretary, Sh. V.C. Pharka, ACS to CM, Sh. Sanjeev Gupta, ACS (Information Technology) and other senior officers were present during the inaugural ceremony.

Sh. Shrikant Baldi, Additional Chief Secretary (Finance) gave a brief demonstration of the web-portal and explained the specific features for extending the reach of the portal through CSCs (LokMitras) in the State so that citizens residing in rural areas are also covered. He informed that citizens can upload a PDF file also in case of more content.  

The web-portal has been designed and developed by NIC Himachal Pradesh and has bilingual support for sending suggestions in Hindi and English. The interface is quite easy to use and doesn’t have any specific requirements from citizens’ end, like Email or Mobile Phone, which are optional fields. This has been done with a view to attract more suggestions in case someone doesn’t want their identity to be known. The suggestions are accessible to the State Finance Department for consideration based on its type and departments.