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Parliament Winter Session
A joint committee of Parliament examining a bill to hold simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies was on Wednesday granted a fresh extension till the end of the Winter session. Committee chairman PP Chaudhary moved a resolution seeking extension of the deadline for submission of the Committee's report till the first day of the last week of the Winter Session. The resolution was passed by voice vote. Winter Session of Parliament usually begins in the last week of November and concludes ahead of Christmas. The 41-member Committee is examining the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Ninth Amendment) Bill, 2024 to implement the One Nation One Election framework. The Committee has been conducting nationwide consultations on the proposed rollout of simultaneous elections for the Lok Sabha, state assemblies and local bodies by 2029.
The Congress on Saturday took a swipe at the Modi government over the passage of the SHANTI Bill, saying it was bulldozed in Parliament not only for TRUMP but also for ADANI. Congress general secretary in charge of communications, Jairam Ramesh, shared a screenshot of a media report on X, which claimed that the Adani group plans a nuclear energy foray after private firms get a go-ahead to enter the sector. Parliament on Thursday passed the nuclear energy Bill, with the Rajya Sabha giving its nod to the legislation seeking to open the tightly-controlled civil nuclear sector for private participation. "SHANTI was bulldozed through in Parliament not only for TRUMP (The Reactor Use Management Programme) but also for ADANI (Accelerated Damaging Adhiniyam for Nuclear India)," Ramesh claimed. The Congress on Saturday alleged that the SHANTI Bill was "bulldozed" in Parliament only to help Prime Minister Narendra Modi restore SHANTI with his once good friend. Ramesh had said the SHANTI Bil
Rajya Sabha Chairman C P Radhakrishnan on Friday strongly disapproved of disruptions by Opposition members during the passage of the rural employment guarantee bill (G RAM G), terming the conduct "unbecoming of Members of Parliament", and urged them to introspect and refrain from such behaviour in future. Radhakrishnan read out a synopsis of the legislative and other business transacted during the 15-day sitting of the Winter session before adjourning the proceedings sine die. Adjourned sine die (Latin for without a day') means suspending a parliamentary session indefinitely, without setting a specific date to reconvene. It's used when legislative bodies end a session without naming a future date for reassembly. The Winter session of Parliament started on December 1. "Disruption created during yesterday's sitting by the Opposition Members by shouting slogans, displaying placards, disrupting the Minister replying to the discussion, tearing up papers and throwing them in the well of
Lok Sabha was adjourned sine die on Friday, drawing curtains on the 19-day-long Winter Session of Parliament. During the brief session with 15 sittings, key Bills were passed, including the one to open up the civil nuclear sector for private companies. Another Bill to replace the MNREGA with a new law the VB-G RAM G Bill assuring 125 days of guaranteed jobs for rural India was passed amid opposition protests on Thursday, including tearing of papers. The House also took up two debates on 150 years of Vande Matram and election reforms which witnessed a politically charged atmosphere. A Bill to set up a higher education regulator was referred to a joint committee of the two Houses. Another Bill on the market securities code was introduced and referred to a department-related standing committee for further examination. As soon as the House met for the day, Speaker Om Birla adjourned Lok Sabha sine die (for an indefinite period). The House saw productivity of 111 per cent during
Opposition leaders staged a 12-hour overnight protest dharna in Parliament complex on Thursday night, while protesting against the passage of the VB-G RAM G bill that seeks to replace the MGNREGA rural employment programme and said they would take to the streets across the country. Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha deputy leader Sagarika Ghose accused the Union government of bulldozing the VB- G RAM G bill, as opposition MPs sat on a 12-hour dharna in the Parliament complex. The Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill was passed by Parliament amid opposition's protests, with the Rajya Sabha giving it its nod post midnight. Ghose said the manner in which the Modi government has brought in this completely "anti-poor, anti-people, anti-farmer, anti-rural poor" VBGRG bill, and has done away with the MGNREGA. "This is an insult to India's poor, it is an insult to Mahatma Gandhi, it is an insult to Rabindranath Tagore. With just five hours' notice,
The Lok Sabha on Thursday passed a bill that seeks to replace the 20-year-old MGNREGA with a new initiative that guarantees rural jobs for 125 days every year amid vociferous protests by the Opposition. Rural Development Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan responded to the eight-hour discussion on The Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill, asserting that the Modi government was ensuring that the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi were upheld through various initiatives taken by it. "Congress killed ideals of Bapu, NDA ensured Bapu lives through pucca houses built under the PM Awas Yojana, Ujjwala yojana, Swachh Bharat Mission, Ayushman Bharat," Chouhan said listing out government schemes for welfare of the poor. Opposition members trooped to the well of the House raising slogans against the government from dropping Mahatma Gandhi's name from the rural jobs initiative and tearing copies of the G RAM G Bill and flinging it towards the chair. The Lok Sabh
The central government may consider increasing the number of scholarships given to tribal students wishing to go abroad for higher studies from the present 20 to 50, Lok Sabha was informed on Thursday. The National Overseas Scholarship for Schedule Tribes (ST) students is implemented through the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), and the funds are released to ST students studying abroad through the MEA by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs. "We can increase the number of overseas scholarships given to tribal students from present 20 to 50," Union Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram said during Question Hour. When an opposition member questioned why the number of overseas scholarships is so low, Oram hit back, saying the opposition, when in power for a long period, hardly did anything for the welfare of the tribals. He said it was Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who first created the Tribal Affairs Ministry for the welfare of the tribal communities.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday introduced the Securities Market Code Bill in the Lok Sabha and proposed referring it to the department-related standing committee for greater discussion. Arun Nehru (DMK) and Manish Tewari (Congress) opposed the bill at the introduction stage, saying that it gave excessive powers to one body which was against the principle of separation of powers. They described the bill as a case of excessive delegation of power. Responding to their claims, the finance minister said since the government is referring it to the standing committee, such details can be discussed by the panel. Krishna Prasad Tenneti, chairing the proceedings, said the Lok Sabha Speaker has the powers to refer bills to parliamentary panels and he will take a call on the issue. The Securities Markets Code Bill 2025 seeks to merge the provisions of the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992, the Depositories Act, 1996 and the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act,
The tough provisions of India's nuclear liability laws led to "silent phobia" among industry, prompting the government to bring a new comprehensive bill to address their concerns and open up the atomic energy sector for private participation, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Wednesday. Singh was replying to a discussion in the Lok Sabha that passed the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill by a voice vote amid a walk out by the opposition. The opposition contended that the government was putting citizens in harm by allowing suppliers of nuclear equipment to escape the liability net in case of a nuclear accident. "The government will deal only with the operator, it is upon the operator to deal with the supplier," Singh, the Minister of State in the PMO, who oversees the Department of Atomic Energy, told the Lok Sabha. He said the operator liability has been rationalised through graded caps linked to reactor size to encoura