New Delhi: The finance minister yesterday hiked the defence budget 23 per cent to Rs 77,000 crores as against revised estimates of Rs 63,000 crores, but did away with NDA regime''s proposal to have a three year non-lapseable revolving fund.

The allocation for defence capital now is Rs 33,482 crores as against last year''s revised estimates of Rs 16,906 crores with prime minister manmohan singh saying that defence expenditure had been neglected over the past three to four years

In his budget speech, Chidambaram said it had become "necessary" to make a higher allocation this year to keep up the trend of acquisition of state-of-the-art weapons. With the doubling of capital outlay, it appears the Government would go ahead with pending proposals to acquire French killer class Scorpene submarines, 125 multi-purpose fighters for the Air Force to replace aging Mig-21''s and with about Rs 4,000 crore project to increase the firepower of the infantry.