10 bills cleared in winter storm, 15 set for Jan 29
MIXED BAG Legislation to criminalise triple talaq now moves to Budget session
NEWDELHI: The stormy winter session of Parliament concluded on Friday with a mixed bag of results and all eyes are now on the Budget session, which is scheduled to begin from January 29.
Parliament cleared 10 bills while 15 new bills were introduced amid frequent standoffs between the government and the Opposition over issues such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks against his predecessor Manmohan Singh, caste violence in Maharashtra and the terror attack in Pulwama.
The Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha utilised nearly 78% and 54% of their allotted time — a drastic improvement from the winter session of 2016. However, of the 11 sessions since the NDA came to power in 2014, the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha’s time utilisation in this session stood at the fourth lowest, PRS Legislative Research data revealed.
The government’s biggest achievement lay in the introduction of a historic legislation — The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017, — to criminalise triple talaq. The bill, passed in the Lok Sabha, could not be cleared in the Rajya Sabha as the ruling side and the Opposition locked horns over it.
Hours after the winter session came to an end, the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs recommended that the Budget session would start from January 29 and the Union Budget would be presented on February 1.
The session also marked VicePresident Venkaiah Naidu’s first full session in Chair. After Rajya Sabha bore the brunt of most of the confrontations between the government and the Opposition, Naidu said in his valedictory remarks: “This session... has had its highs and lows”. “It is unfortunate that despite discharging its responsibilities to a great extent, the...house ends up losing some degree of the esteem on account of disruptions and... loss of functional time. Intense and passionate submissions and debates are the order of democracy, but disruptions certainly not,” he said.