Budget 2022: Separate timings for both Houses to maintain Covid protocols

While the upper house will sit from 10 AM to 3 PM, the lower house will sit from 4 PM to 9 PM.

The Lok Sabha will take up the discussion on the Motion of Thanks on the President's Address from Wednesday and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to reply to the debate on February 7.

Lok Sabha secretariat officials said four days beginning February 2 have been provisionally allotted for the discussion on the Motion of Thanks on the President's Address.

The first part of the Budget Session will be held from January 31 to February 11 after which it will go into a recess to examine the budgetary allocations for different departments.

The Session would resume on March 14 and conclude on April 8. The first part of the session will have 10 sittings while 19 sittings are scheduled for the second part.

Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla this evening took stock of arrangements for the Budget session. The two met at the residence of the Vice President and both the presiding officers went over various issues for about 40 minutes.

The session offers only a seventy-nine and a half hours window for the government's legislative agenda and for taking up issues of immediate public concern over the scheduled 29 sittings of both the Houses.

A total of 135 hours of sitting time is available for Rajya Sabha for transacting various items of business during the 27 sittings scheduled during February 2 to April 8, 2022 with 5 hours per day.

Of this, the first part of the session with 40 hours accounts for about 30 percent of the total scheduled sitting time while the second part with 95 hours accounts for about 70 percent.

Rajya Sabha will have Zero Hour reduced by half to 30 minutes per day with a total time of 13 hours 30 minutes for raising issues of public importance besides laying of papers and reports during 27 sittings.

The timeshare of Question Hour will be 27 hours. A total of 15 hours' time is scheduled for Private Members' Business on six days.

During the first week of the second part of the session, Private Members' Bills will be taken up on Thursday as Friday is a holiday.

This leaves only 79 hours 30 minutes for considering and passing Bills to be proposed by the Government besides discussing issues of immediate public concern under Calling Attention Notices and as Short Duration Discussions.

The Budget session beginning tomorrow is the sixth to be held since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020.

The Budget session of 2020 was curtailed by eight sittings and the Budget session of 2021 was shortened by 10 sittings.

Read More:https://www.dtnext.in/News/National/2022/01/31110202/1341389/Stormy-Budget-session-likely-as-Opposition-to-raise-.vpf