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The winter session of Parliament will begin on November 29 and end on December 23, a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) chaired by Defense Minister Rajnath Singh decided on Monday.
Like the previous session, the sittings of both the Houses – Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha – will be held together as per the COVID-19 guidelines and members of both the Houses are expected to follow social distancing norms.
Each house will have around 20 sittings and the government may introduce a bill to facilitate privatization of public sector banks, which was announced in the general budget this year.
A Bill is also likely to be introduced to amend the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Act, 2013 to facilitate the separation of National Pension System Trust from PFRDA to ensure universal pension coverage.
A bill to replace the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Amendment) Ordinance, 2021, which was promulgated on September 30 for stricter punishment provisions in the NDPS Act, is also likely to be introduced in the winter session.
The government may also introduce a second batch of ‘supplementary demands for grants’, which would allow it to incur additional expenditure in addition to the Finance Bill.
The session is likely to be a tumultuous one as the opposition will corner the government on the issue of price rise, civilian killings and Lakhimpur Kheri incident in Jammu and Kashmir. The farmers’ movement against the three agricultural laws can also be raised.
The Monsoon Session of Parliament was disrupted by opposition uproar over various issues including Pegasus espionage, inflation and farmers’ protests.
According to PRS Legislative Research data, the productivity of Parliament during the monsoon session in the last two decades was the lowest for the third time, with the productivity of Lok Sabha at just 21 per cent while that of Rajya Sabha at 28 per cent which was eighth. lowest since 1999
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