Monsoon Session of State Assembly to begin today at Gairsain
By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun/Gairsain, 20 Aug: A three day state assembly session is due to begin tomorrow at the Gairsain Assembly Complex. In this connection, all preparations for the session are complete.
An all party meeting of the members was held this evening at Gairsain besides a meeting of the BJP Legislative Party. The three day session is expected to be stormy with the Opposition planning to corner the government on issues such as Ankita Bhandari, Kedarnath disaster and the law and order situation in the wake of the recent gang rape incident in Dehradun and the issue of unemployment.
On other hand, the government will table the supplementary budget to the tune of around Rs 5,000 crores for the current year. This is the first time in the current year that supplementary demands are going to the tabled in the House. This is the second session in the current year of the state assembly. Though the session has been convened for three days, some members apprehend that it might get reduced to just two days as had been done during the previous session. Uttarakhand is witnessing bare minimum sittings and sessions of the House since past few years and the sessions are also getting shorter. Two to three day sessions have become the norm in the past few years. Although, the Opposition criticises the BJP Government for the short assembly sessions, the Opposition members also do not seem to be prepared for longer sessions. In the present assembly, two new members will be attending the session. One of them is four-time MLA Qazi Nizamuddin who represents Manglaur Assembly constituency and the other is first time MLA Lakhpat Singh Butola from Badrinath. Both the Congress leaders won the byelections held recently on the vacant seats.
Besides the supplementary budget, some other important bills are also lined up by the government to be tabled in the session along with some annual reports. The bills expected to be tabled include reservation for Agniveers in state government services and the bill related to reservation for statehood agitationists and their dependants.
