Budget session of U’khand Assembly to be held in Gairsain from 7 June

By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 20 May: Finally, orders have been issued by Principal Secretary, Legislative Works and Parliamentary Affairs, Hira Singh Bonal on convening the budget session of the state assembly. The full-time budget session of the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly is going to start on 7 June. The budget session, as had been promised by the government, will be held in Gairsain. The budget session was earlier being planned for July but, over the past few days, as had been stated by this publication, the government was mulling on convening the session in the second week of June. Finally, orders in this regard have been issued. Actually, this is going to be the first full-time budget for Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami. In his last term as CM, Dhami didn’t get the opportunity to present the budget.
Soon after Dhami took over as CM for the second time in March, this year, his government had convened a short session of the state assembly in Dehradun during which the Vote on Accounts was passed. Now, a full scale budget will be tabled for the Financial Year 2022-23 at the coming assembly session in Gairsain.
It may be recalled that, yesterday, the government had fixed the days for various ministers to respond to the questions during the Question Hour. Monday is the day fixed for the Chief Minister to respond to the questions during Question Hour in respect of departments of which he holds charge. As 7 June is Tuesday, so the CM will not get to answer the questions at least during the first week of the session. Interestingly, however, on most occasions, the assembly session has begun in Uttarakhand on Tuesday and the CM manages to avoid answering the questions. There have been few assembly sessions in Uttarakhand that have gone into the second week. Of course, technically it is not necessary for the CM to respond to the questions, himself, unless he is present in the House during Question Hour. In his absence, the questions can be responded to by the Parliamentary Affairs Minister. Even though the assembly sessions are short and few in Uttarakhand, it has been generally seen that the CM is rarely present during Question Hour in the House. Monday is also the day fixed for Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prem Chand Agarwal to respond to the questions. On Tuesday, Cabinet Minister Satpal Maharaj will answer the questions. During the Question Hour on Wednesday, cabinet ministers Rekha Arya and Chandan Ram Das will be responding to the questions. On Thursday, Cabinet Ministers Dhan Singh Rawat and Subodh Uniyal will have to respond to the questions. On Friday, cabinet ministers Ganesh Joshi and Saurabh Bahuguna will respond to the questions. On Saturdays, usually, there is no sitting of the House.