Government Scrap Winter Session of Parliament, Opposition Cries Foul
Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Dec 15: Even as the official data released by the union health ministry on Tuesday show further dip in the number of daily Covid cases in the country, the Narendra Modi government announced the cancellation of the winter session of Parliament claiming that the opposition parties were against holding the session due to the prevailing pandemic.
This prompted immediate protests from the opposition parties claiming that the decision by the government was unilateral and no opposition party was consulted before cancelling the session. The opposition parties on the contrary wanted immediate convening of the Parliament sessions to discuss the on-going agitation by the farmers.
Even though it was being surmised for some time that the customary winter session of Parliament was unlikely to be convened this year due to the pandemic, the government’s official decision became known from a letter the parliamentary affairs minister Pralhad Joshi wrote to the Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.
In response to a letter from Chowdhury demanding an immediate Parliament session to discuss the farmers’ strike and other pending issues, Joshi claimed that the “leaders of all political parties were in favour of doing away with the winter session of Parliament in view of the pandemic situation.”
The opposition parties immediately alleged that they were not consulted by the government over its move to scrap the winter session, insisting that Parliament should meet to discuss the ongoing farmers’ protests over the three controversial agriculture laws.
Senior Congress leader and former union minister Jairam Ramesh took to twitter to claim that the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad was not consulted by the government on the issue.
“Mr Pralhad Joshi is as usual departing from the truth,” Ramesh tweeted.
When asked if his party had been consulted on the issue, Trinamool Congress leader Derek O’Brien replied, “Consulted? Are you joking?”
In the past few weeks, the opposition parties have stepped up their demand for holding the winter session in view of the ongoing farmers’ agitation over three new farm laws, saying the government should repeal these legislations and hold fresh discussions on reforms in the agricultural sector.
The Congress Members of Parliament from Punjab have been on a sit-in protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar for the past several days, urging the government to immediately convene Parliament to repeal the farm laws and discuss the farmers’ issues.
Joshi told Chowdhury, “Winter months are very crucial for managing the pandemic because of recent spurt in cases during this period, particularly in Delhi. At present, we are in the middle of December and a Covid vaccine is expected very soon. In this regard, I have informally contacted floor leaders of various political parties and they have expressed their concerns about the ongoing pandemic and opined of doing away with winter session,” the parliamentary affairs minister said.
He said the government was willing to have the next session of Parliament at the earliest. “It would be appropriate to have the budget session, 2021 in January, keeping in mind the unprecedented circumstances created by Covid-19 pandemic,” Joshi added.
Claiming that India had achieved several significant milestones in its fight against COVID, the union health ministry data showed that the new confirmed cases in the last 24 hours have fallen under 22,100 for the first time in 161 days. The daily new cases on Tuesday came down to 22,065 since 22,252 recorded on July 7.
With a high number of COVID patients recovering every day and the sustained fall in the mortality rate, India’s steady trend of registering dipping active cases continues, a release by the health ministry claimed.
In another achievement, the active cases have drastically declined below 3.4 lakh. The total positive cases of the country are 3,39,820 and now comprise merely 3.43% of the total cases.
It said the slide in the active cases was supplemented by an exponential rise in the recoveries. The total recovered cases have crossed 94 lakhs (94,22,636). The gap between active cases and recovered cases was continuously increasing and stood at 90,82,816 on Tuesday.
Quoting statistics from world over, the ministry claimed that India’s recovery rate at 95.12% was the highest in the world. While the average recovery for the entire world was 70.12%, it was 86.82% in Brazil, 79.25 in Russia, 60.12% in Italy and 58.26% in the United States.
