Rajya Sabha clears additional allocation for fertilizer subsidy

The Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, December 16, 2025, approved the first batch of Supplementary Demands for Grants, authorizing the Union Government to spend an additional ₹ 41,455 crore in 2025-26. This includes more than ₹18,000 crore for fertilizer subsidy. The gross additional expenditure on Additional Requests for Grants is ₹ 1.32 lakh crore, of which ₹ 90,812.17 crore is savings of various Ministries and departments.

Besides the allocation to meet the fertilizer subsidy, the Supplementary Grant Demands include an allocation of ₹ 9,500 crore to the Ministry of Petroleum to compensate for inadequate collections by oil marketing companies and ₹ 1,304 crore for additional expenses incurred by the Ministry of Higher Education.

Responding to a brief discussion on the issue, Finance Minister Pankaj Chaudhary said that fertilizer costs and use of fertilizers, especially urea, are increasing. There is no fertilizer shortage in the country. He added that urea production has also increased in the country. “Every month, urea production is being increased by around one lakh tonnes per month,” he said.

Arguing that the Union Government is focusing on fiscal consolidation, he said that the fiscal deficit in 2020-21 was 9.2%, while the target was only 4.4% in the 2025-26 fiscal year. He said allocations to the US also increased during the Narendra Modi regime.

During the debate, Opposition MPs alleged that the Center was reducing allocations to States and discriminating against Opposition-ruled States. Congress’ GC Chandrashekhar said there was extra allocation of ₹ 1.32 lakh crore, but the Centre’s popular programs could not be fully implemented by the States due to non-release of funds.

Aam Aadmi Party member Raghav Chadha demanded a ‘Tokenization Bill’ to allow partial ownership of assets through digital tokens. “Asset tokenization is one of the most transformative technological financial innovations of the 21st century, whereby real estate and infrastructure projects and commodities, among others, will be split into small pieces of digital tokens. This fungible token can be used by anyone to buy or sell and use it to make a profit.” [out of it]… This means that these large assets are accessible not only to billionaires, but also to the common man of the country, who can buy large assets and make huge profits,” he said.