M A I N   N E W S

Budget session
Modi’s House test begins today
Faces adjournment motion on price rise
KV Prasad
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 6
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his coalition government will face its first test in conducting the affairs in Parliament with the Budget session scheduled to start tomorrow.

The session will begin amid high hope and soaring expectations of the people from the new regime and a determined Opposition that promises to make up with vigour what it lacks in strength.

The Congress has decided to step up the heat from Day 1 with plans to move adjournment motion on price rise through Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of the party in the Lok Sabha, and his deputy Capt Amarinder Singh.

By deploying the tactical parliamentary tool, the party seeks to send a message that it will mount pressure on the Modi government as its hits the ground running in the first full-fledged session of Parliament after the April-May General Election.

“Being in the Opposition means that we have to keep up the pressure. Both Kharge and I would be submitting adjournment notices tomorrow. We will then wait for the Economic Survey, the Rail and the General Budget to firm up strategy,” Amarinder Singh told The Tribune today.

BJP leaders know that price rise and hike in railway fares are hot-button issues that members in the Opposition are eager to raise. Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu has suggested these could be taken up when the Houses discuss the Budget provisions.

While the passage of the Union Budget before July 31, when the authorisation to draw money from the treasury ends, will be a priority for the government, it plans to introduce 11 new legislations, including the Whistleblowers Protection Bill.

Tomorrow, the Rajya Sabha is scheduled to take up the Bill to amend the National Institute of Design to declare it as an institute of national importance, while the Lok Sabha schedule includes the Bill to replace the Ordinance on AP State Re-organisation. Ahead of the formal start of the July 7-August 14 session, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Naidu is meeting the Leaders of political parties tomorrow where the government business is expected to be outlined.

With a change of government after a decade, it remains to be seen whether confrontation between the ruling coalition benches and the Opposition continues or as Modi promised in his first speech last month, there would be cooperation by taking everyone along.

A confrontation with the government appears to be building on the issue of a designated Leader of the Opposition status to the Congress as also on the allocation of seats in the front row. The Congress, with 44 members, is being given two seats — one for Kharge and another for its president Sonia Gandhi — and if a third is granted, it could go to Amarinder Singh.