Uttar Pradesh Assembly Speaker Hriday Naryan Dikshit said here on Thursday that the Assembly session would commence from August 20 and all the members of the House would strictly follow the guidelines for preventing the spread of the coronavirus pandemic and the Covid protocol.
He said the session would be held as per social distancing protocol for the COVID-19 pandemic as announced by the Central government.
Dikshit said a meeting of the leaders of all parties was convened here on Thursday where the issue was discussed threadbare. He said the meeting was convened to discuss the strategy for the smooth conduct of session.
Besides Parliamentary Affairs Minister Suresh Khanna, leaders of different parties also attended the meeting.
The speaker said Rakesh Singh of Samajwadi party, Lalji Verma of Bahujan Samaj Party attended the meeting. He said Aradhana Mishra, leader of the Congress, communicated over phone that she was unable to attend the meeting as her private secretary was infected by the coronavirus.
He said leader of Apna Dal Neel Ratan Patel and Suheldeo Bhartiya Samaj Party leader Om Prakash Rajbhar also communicated to the Assembly secretariat that they were unable to attend the meeting for certain unavoidable reasons.
The decision for the monsoon session of the Assembly was taken by the state cabinet held through circulation of the cabinet note on July 27.
During the brief monsoon session expected to have 2 sittings, the UP legislature would pass the first supplementary budget of the current fiscal 2020-21 around a dozen of Bill’s for which Ordinances have been promulgated when the houses were not in session.
The UP government, due to pandemic, has borrowed heavily from the bonds market and by the end of last week of March 2020, the state government had raised over Rs 13,000 crore which is 96 percent of the total borrowings to be made by the state government during 2020-21. The money was drawn from the state contingency fund and the government needs to get the legislative approval for recoupment of the State contingency fund.
The monsoon session is the constitutional obligation for the state government as there cannot be gap of six months or more between the two sessions of the State assembly. The budget session of the UP assembly was adjourned sine die on February 28 last; hence the next session will have to be called before August 28.
