On Friday the government reached out to the opposition to smoothen the functioning of the Parliament. The Parliamentary affairs Minister Pawan Bansal stated that, the Finance Minister (Pranab Mukherjee) and I met the opposition leaders (L.K. Advani, Yashwant Sinha and Arun Jaitley). The meeting was fruitful and the response of the BJP was positive. We told them that since the last two sessions had gone by without the House running, there was a lot of pending business left, which needed to be cleared. The ongoing session of the Parliament, from 1st of August to 8th of September, was expected to have 28 working days, of which two weeks have gone by, with legislative work being confined to the last two days. It was confirmed by the sources that the Government and the opposition had decided that both the Houses would take up one full-fledged debate per week, and atleast two calling attentions, with the emphasis being on clearing pending Bills. It was also confirmed by the sources that the leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitely, asked Mukherji about the impact of the U.S. credit downgrade by standard and Poor's rating agency. It was replied by the Finance Minister that the impact was yet to be assessed and that concerns raised by the oppositions would be looked into.
The government has been feeling the pressure of the poor economic numbers for some time and the cornering of the government over price rise and corruption in both the Houses has been telling.
Some of the Bills listed for this session include the Companies Law (amendment) Bill, 2011, the Benami Transactions Bill and the Seeds Bill.
It was again stated by the sources that the Bills listed by the Government were mainly non-controversial ones with the Land Acquisition Bill and the Food Security Bill yet to be finalized.
News Reported By, SM
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