NEW DELHI: The Budget session of Parliament, in which government seeks to convert six recent ordinances into legislations, is set to commence from February 23 and will conclude on May 8 with a month-long recess.
The General Budget will be presented on Saturday, February 28. Before that the Railway Budget will be presented on February 26 followed by the Economic Survey on February 27.
The Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs which met here today recommended to the President the schedule of the Budget session.
The first part of the session will continue till March 20. The second part of the session will commence after a month-long recess from April 20. The session will conclude on May 8, official sources said.
The recess period of the session is utilized by Parliamentary committees to examine the budget proposals of the various ministries.
The session will begin with the address of Pranab Mukherjee to the joint sitting of the two Houses. The Motion of Thanks to the President’s address will be debated on February 24 and 25. If the Motion is not passed in the two days, it will be taken up later.
A senior minister said that in the past too, Budget has been presented on a Saturday.
During the session, government will push for passage of Bills on six ordinances promulgated recently.
The ordinances include those on coal, mines and minerals, e-rickshaws, amendment to Citizenship Act, Land Acquisition and the one on FDI in insurance sector.
“We have decided to highlight the number of ordinances issued by Congress governments during tenures of (Jawaharlal) Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu told reporters after the meeting.
Taking a dig at Congress, Naidu said various ordinances were issued during “Rahulji’s time when Manmohan Singh used to preside and Sonia Gandhi used to decide.”
He said during its short tenure of two years, the United Front government issued 77 ordinances. “My Leftist friends were part of the UF government,” he said, adding that before opposing the ordinances they should remember that they too have taken the route to make laws.
While the first part of the Session is likely to have 26 sittings, the second part would have 19 sittings.
A total of 66 bills, including nine in the Rajya Sabha, are pending in Parliament.
Amongst the bills government proposes to introduce are Amendments to the Whistleblowers Protection Act, The Rights to Services and Grievances Redress Bill, Amendment to the Inter-state Water Dispute Act, The Carriage by Air (Amendment) Bill, The Recognition of New Systems of Medicine Bill, Amendment to the National Commission for Women Act, and the Andhra Pradesh Reorganization (Second Amendment) Bill, the sources said.
The meeting, chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, was attended by Law Minister D V Sadananda Gowda, Chemicals Minister Ananth Kumar, Minorities Affairs Minister Najma Heptulla, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, Naidu and his two Ministers of State of Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Rajiv Pratap Rudy.–PTI
