Central taxes and grants account for about 87.5% of budgeted 2026–27 revenue receipts. The budget is a plan; audited expenditure and verified outcomes answer different questions.
Budget at a Glance 2026–27, PDF p.3. Estimates describe intended financing, not actual receipts or service delivery.
Where the revenue is expected to come from
The 2026–27 Budget at a Glance estimates revenue receipts of ₹23,102.44 crore. The share of central taxes is ₹9,554.36 crore and central grants ₹10,660.66 crore. Adding those two categories and dividing by revenue receipts gives approximately 87.5%. This calculation describes the revenue composition in the budget estimate.
Own tax revenue of ₹2,437.42 crore and own non-tax revenue of ₹450 crore make up the remaining categories. Transfer dependence makes the timing and conditions of central resources relevant to fiscal planning. It does not, by itself, establish the effectiveness or fairness of individual expenditure decisions.
A planned allocation is not a completed project
Capital outlay is budgeted at ₹4,716.32 crore for 2026–27, compared with the 2025–26 revised estimate of ₹4,761.22 crore: about 0.94% lower in nominal terms. This is a comparison between two estimates, not evidence that completed investment fell by that amount. Capital outlay is also narrower than total capital expenditure, which includes other transactions.
The fiscal explorer separates actuals, budget estimates and revised estimates. Comparing them without retaining those labels can manufacture a delivery claim. For a road, school or rehabilitation project, the next evidence should connect the demand for grants to sanction, release, expenditure, completion and functioning service.
What an audit adds
The CAG State Finances Audit Report for 2023–24 records committed and inflexible expenditure of ₹9,965.59 crore, 72.10% of revenue expenditure. That historical composition helps explain limits on discretionary spending; it should not be presented as the current year’s measured position.
The same report identifies 6,599 outstanding utilisation certificates involving ₹15,086.85 crore as at 31 March 2024. An outstanding certificate means the required accounting evidence was pending in the audit’s stated scope. It is not a finding that every rupee was stolen, nor a current balance after subsequent submissions. Follow-up action and later accounts matter. The detailed chapter also cautions that grants were not segregated into recurring and non-recurring categories in sanction orders, so the outstanding count may include grants for which a certificate was not required.
Targets have assumptions
The 2026–27 FRBM statement projects outstanding debt at 39.14% of GSDP for 2026–27, then 37.60% and 35.80% in the following two years. These are targets or projections, not realised debt ratios. The document also assumes GSDP growth of 20% in 2027–28 and 26% in 2028–29.
Debt-to-GSDP can improve because debt grows more slowly, because the denominator grows faster, or both. A reader should inspect the growth assumptions alongside the ratio. Different GSDP vintages should not be mixed between fiscal publications and later economic revisions.
The accountability chain
A serious constituency assessment asks which agency controlled an allocation, when funds were released, what was procured, whether work was completed, and whether residents can use the service. Aggregate state expenditure cannot identify a constituency’s allocation or demonstrate an individual officeholder’s responsibility.
The practical research task is a project register with dated documents and stable identifiers. The current site has aggregate fiscal evidence and an audit baseline. It does not claim to have verified the delivery of every public project or the latest settlement of every audit observation.
PRIMARY EVIDENCE & REPRODUCIBILITY
Read the sources.
- Budget at a Glance 2026–27 ↗
PDF p.3, printed p.1; actual / BE / RE columns
- CAG State Finances Audit Report 2023–24 ↗
Executive summary, PDF pp.14 and 18; detailed qualification on PDF p.121 (printed p.95); period ending 31 March 2024
- FRBM statement 2026–27 ↗
PDF pp.3–4, printed pp.1–2; targets and growth assumptions
Calculations are descriptive. Sources retain their stated reference periods. Related internal pages link to underlying documents and review notes. Corrections and missing fields remain visible in the source register.