WINTER SESSION OF PARLIMENT

• With 25 Bills, including two financial Bills, listed for the 17-day Winter Session of Parliament, the Opposition parties have expressed concern about the limited time available for any meaningful debate on them.
• At an all-party meeting on Tuesday, they said there would be even less time available to raise other relevant issues.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi skipped the meeting, and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh chaired it in his absence.
• Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha Piyush Goyal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi were present. The meeting is called before every session to discuss the legislative agenda.
• The Winter Session begins on Wednesday and will go on till December 29.
• Most parties said the government was trying to hurry through the debates on important legislation.
• “If we are to remove the time required for procedural stuff, Zero Hour, Question Hour and so on, effectively there are only 56 hours available to debate 25 Bills.
• This is deeply problematic,” Congress Whip in the Rajya Sabha Syed Naseer Hussain said. Many other parties echo this view.

EC appointment

• The party demanded a debate on the appointment of former IAS officer Arun Goel as Election Commissioner, against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s observation in November that the appointment was made in a “tearing hurry”.
• The Congress also demanded a discussion on the 10% reservation for the Economically Weaker Sections. The party had initially welcomed the Supreme Court judgment allowing the quota, but revised its stand after its allies such as the DravidaMunnetraKazgham made forceful arguments against it.
• The Trinamool Congress, which was represented by its floor leaders in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, Sudeep Bandhopadhyay and Derek O’Brien, respectively, raised the issue of long-pending dues to the States.
• The Congress and several other parties questioned the scheduling of the session during Christmas. Congress floor leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said, “I am not asking for curtailing the session, but the Winter Session should have started earlier so that people could celebrate it [Christmas].”
• Joshi dismissed the contention that the BJP government was wilfully ignoring Christmas. “There will be a holiday on December 24 and 25 as it is a weekend. It is not fair to say that we will not work after December 25,” the Minister said.

SOURCE: THE HINDU, THE ECONOMIC TIMES, PIB