Parliament's Budget session to begin on Wed, 14 suspended MPs to return

The Budget session of Parliament, the last of the 17th Lok Sabha (LS), will begin with the President’s address to a joint sitting of both Houses on Wednesday, and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the vote on accounts on Thursday. She will also table the Budget for Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), which is under President’s Rule. The session is scheduled to have eight sittings and will conclude on February 9.

President Droupadi Murmu will address members of the two Houses in the LS chamber, as the new Parliament building does not have a Central Hall. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will reply to the debate on the motion of thanks on the President’s address in the two Houses.

After the customary session eve ‘all-party meeting’, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi said the government did not have any legislative agenda for the Budget session. He said that the focus would be on the President’s address, debate on the motion of thanks, presentation of the interim Budget, and the Budget for J&K.

“They (the Opposition) have given suggestions, but since this is the last session of the present LS, we have told them we will give them an opportunity in the next session,” Joshi said.

Joshi said on Tuesday that 14 Opposition Members of Parliament (MPs), including 11 Rajya Sabha (RS) and three LS MPs, suspended during the last session and their cases referred to the Privileges Committees, will return to attend the Budget session. He mentioned that the Chairs in the two Houses have agreed to the government’s request to revoke their suspensions.

At Tuesday’s RS Privileges Committee meeting, 11 suspended MPs tendered an apology, explaining the context of their protests. They clarified that it was not their intent to insult the proceedings of the House but to tender their apology if their conduct had aggrieved the Chair. The three suspended LS MPs had apologised to the House Privileges Committee at its meeting earlier this month. After the MPs regretted their conduct, the LS and RS committees recommended withdrawing their suspensions.

A total of 146 MPs were suspended during the winter session, 100 in the LS and the rest in the RS. Of these, the transgressions of the 14 were considered serious and referred to the respective Privileges Committees of the two Houses. The remaining 132 were suspended for the remainder of the winter session, which concluded on December 21. The stringent security measures undertaken to regulate visitors on the premises of Parliament after the December 13 security breach will continue.

According to PRS Legislative Research, in terms of the number of sittings held, the 17th LS is set to be the shortest full-term LS since 1952. Including the Budget session’s eight sittings, the 17th LS would have sat for 273 days by February 9, including the four-day special session in September 2023.

On average, it had 55 sittings a year (including the scheduled eight sittings of its last session), with the coronavirus pandemic reducing the number of sittings to just 33 in 2020. Previously, of all the LS’ that completed their full five-year terms, the 16th LS (2014-19) had the lowest sitting days (331), and the 14th (2004-09) sat for 332 days.

The 17th LS is also the first since 1952 that did not elect a Deputy Speaker.

Article 93 of the Constitution states that “the House of the People shall, as soon as may be, choose two members of the House to be respectively Speaker and Deputy Speaker”.

The Opposition has also criticised the government for referring fewer Bills to parliamentary standing committees and often resorting to issuing ordinances during the term of the 17th LS. The current LS also witnessed a record number of suspensions of MPs.

At the ‘all-party meeting’, Congress MP D K Suresh said the party would raise unemployment, inflation, and ethnic strife in Manipur during the session.

Trinamool Congress’ Sudip Bandyopadhyay said the finance minister should allocate the dues pending to West Bengal in the vote on accounts.

Samajwadi Party’s S T Hassan demanded steps to strengthen the Places of Worship Act that freezes the status of religious places of worship as they existed on August 15, 1947, and prohibits their conversion while ensuring the maintenance of their religious character.

Congress’ Pramod Tiwari, who represented the Leader of Opposition in RS Mallikarjun Kharge, said an “unwritten dictatorship” prevails in the country and accused the central government of misusing probe agencies, including the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate, to target Opposition leaders such as Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad.