This winter, Parliament could work just six days

The Winter Session of Parliament is expected to be highly curtailed or, as the Opposition apprehends, “not held at all” this year.

The session is traditionally convened in the third week of November and continues for about a month. Last year, the session stretched from November 16 to December 16 with a total of 21 sittings. This year, the schedule of Gujarat Assembly elections, where polling is to be held during December 9-14, clashes with the dates of the session.

The government has reportedly informally communicated to Opposition parties that there will be no sitting of the House in November.

And there is no clarity yet on how many days it will meet in December. The tentative date for the start of the session is expected to be December 13, a day after campaigning for the second and final phase of Gujarat election ends. The Winter Session comes to an end before Christmas. That being the practice, it leaves only eight working days for Parliament and the Opposition is already anxious about the session being “reduced to a farce”.

Leaders from the ruling side and the Opposition, with whom BusinessLine spoke, said a final decision will be taken at the meeting of the Cabinet Committee of Parliamentary Affairs (CCPA), which is scheduled to meet this week.

“If the session meets before the Gujarat elections, only the third front will be there in the House and the Rajya Sabha will have to be steered by (SP leader) Naresh Agarwal,” said a senior BJP leader.

An Opposition MP said the BJP leaders have informally told them that there will be no session in November. “In December, it seems the Centre’s plan is to hold the session from December 13, a day after the Gujarat campaign ends. But then, as per the usual practice, they will have to adjourn the House sine die before Christmas. In that case, there will be just eight working days and if you exclude Fridays, the private member days, there will be just six days of session. It will be a farce. It will be like the Gujarat model of convening Assembly session when Narendra Modi was Chief Minister,” the leader said.

The Opposition believes that the Centre will hold the session only to pass the Goods and Services Tax (Compensation to States) Amendment Bill, 2017 that replaces the Ordinance issued on September 2. The Ordinance was promulgated to increase the cess cap on luxury cars, SUVs from 15 per cent to 25 per cent. “They do not have any other agenda, it seems. That is why they want to limit the number of days. We are waiting for a formal decision from the CCPA,” the Opposition MP said.

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