The political turmoil, however, is likely to put Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA) and Prevention of Money Laundering bills on the backburner once again.

Political observers are confident that the President and Parliament will find a way out to save the Finance Bill in the event of the fall of the Government.

Citing a precedence, observers said the political leadership did not allow the `dream budget' of former finance minister P Chidambaram to lapse and the President prevailed upon Parliament to ratify the budget to prevent any financial and economic crisis.

The observers, therefore, feel that the budget, which has at least one good feature -- rationalisation of the indirect-tax structure -- will get Parliament approval even if the political uncertainty results in a change at the Centre.

Also at the same time, officials state that it would not be easy for theGovernment to prepare a fresh budget and give some useful direction to the economy during the current fiscal. However, the option of seeking another vote-on-account will be there, which can be exercised if the new Government decides to work on its own proposals for 1999-2000. Also, it is widely recognised that euphoria generated by finance minister Yashwant Sinha's budget needed to be preserved.

With political uncertainty looming large, the immediate priority of the Government would be to push the budget when Parliament reassembles on April 15. The Centre has time till only May 12 to get the Finance Bill approved by Parliament otherwise the tax proposals will automatically become infructous.

According to finance-ministry officials, although it was not technically impossible to render the budget proposals infructous in the event of the change of the Government, it would be most unfortunate and hopefully the responsible political leadership would not push the country into deeper economic morass at a timewhen the industry and markets have started looking up.

Although the possibility of the budget getting derailed is remote, the political uncertainty will take its toll on other important economic legislations which have yet to see the light of the day.

The insurance reform bill has been pending in Parliament for long, although successive finance ministers beginning from Manmohan Singh have repeatedly underlined the need for opening insurance business to the private sector. At a time when former finance minister P Chidambaram was all set to get the IRA Bill approved by Lok Sabha, BJP played politics and the bill had to be withdrawn.

Yashwant Sinha has again tried to free the insurance sector and the IRA bill, for the second time, was scrutinised by the Standing Committee on Finance. The BJP government, on its part accepted, the recommendations of the committee almost in toto. However, now with politics taking the driver's seat, the possibility of insurance sector seeing more players again appears like theproverbial slip between the cup and the lip. Similarly, the twin Fema and Money Laundering bills will continue to remain on the agenda of this or the other Government for some more time.