Two bills passed in 15 minutes; assembly adjourned sine die

CHANDIGARH: The Haryana Vidhan Sabha passed an appropriation bill and value added tax (second amendment) bill within 15 minutes before the House was adjourned sine die here on Wednesday.

The Haryana Value Added Tax (Second Amendment) Bill is aimed at giving a relief to the trading community amounting to about `5,560 crore. An ordinance in the context had already been passed by the previous Congress government, which was passed as a bill by the new BJP government on Wednesday.

The bill was passed in order to facilitate recovery of old arrears and to provide relief to all types of dealers from payments of penalties and interest for which an amnesty scheme was proposed by the department. As there was no enabling provision in the Haryana Value Added Tax Act, 2003, to notify the said scheme, hence the need to insert an enabling provision in the Act.

The cabinet, in its meeting on July 30, had approved the proposal and an ordinance was passed by the governor, which was notified on September 2.

The supplementary estimates for 2014-15 forming part of the Haryana Appropriation Bill amounting to about ` 2,558 crore was also passed by the House to meet supplementary grants made by the legislative assembly for the expenditure for 2014-15 financial year. Both the bills were introduced by finance minister Capt Abhimanyu, which were passed by the House. Interestingly, when the bills were passed, only a few members were present in the House. There were only about a dozen MLAs, including parliamentary affairs minister Ram Bilas Shar ma, Gian Chand Gupta, Rohita Rewri and Krishan Panwar from the treasury benches, and Karan Dalal and Abhay Chautala from Congress and INLD, respectively, for the initial few minutes in the House.

Even chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar arrived only a few minutes before the House — which met for 15 minutes — was adjourned sine die.