The Parliament put an end to all the speculations as it announced that there will be no Winter session for the Parliament due to the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic. All political parties have favoured the scrapping down of the session in order to curb Covid spread and would straight away be jumping to the Budget session that takes place in January as per the information received by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi. 

The news was confirmed through the means of a letter on Monday which was in response to Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chaudhary’s demand for a session so that the new farm laws could be discussed owing to its controversial nature as the massive farmer protests have taken over the highways near Delhi. Stress was laid on the need to amend these laws that have been forced through Parliament by the government. 

The justification provided in the letter for not holding the Winter session of the Parliament was said to be in support of the cases of coronavirus which have seen an increase in the winter months and therefore it was crucial to take steps in order to manage the pandemic.

“It would be appropriate to have the Budget Session, 2021 in January, keeping in mind the unprecedented circumstances created by COVID-19 pandemic (sic),” the letter said.

It was decided that since it was the middle of December and the vaccine is supposedly going to come very soon thus all the floor leaders of various political parties were expressing concerns over the increase of the pandemic and they were of the consensus that the Parliament should do away with the Pandemic. 

However, since the Parliament will be now meeting for its Budget session in 2021 which is expected to be held in the last week of January before the budget is announced on the first of February. 

The decision to scrap down the winter session also came forth after the Monsoon Session had to be cut down because many members of Parliament had contracted the Coronavirus disease. Since a large figure of the parliamentarians is elderly it naturally made them more prone to the coronavirus and this is also one of the reasons that had to be considered.

Was The Congress not consulted in making the decision? 

Though the Parliamentary Affairs Minister made it clear through a letter to the Congress that all political parties were in favour of not holding a winter session in order to avoid further Covid spread and would directly beholding the budget session in January however Congress has said that it was never consulted in the first place

Does the scrapping down of the Winter Session have anything to do with the controversial farm laws? 

The monsoon session was held in September after a long delay yet was considered to be one of the most productive sessions as there were 27 bills that were passed in the continuous sittings that were held by the parliament. 3 farm laws which have sparked the current protests were also passed during this session and though the justification given by Parliament for scrapping down the winter session was to curb the spread of the virus however in the opinion of Congress’s Lok Sabha leader Mr Chaudhary the letter addressed to him was actually a way of the government to get away with the mess that has been caused because of the current farmer protests.

Another senior Congress leader Mr Ramesh also tweeted that the government was actually “departing from the truth” and the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Congress Member Ghulam Nabi Azad had actually not been consulted before taking the decision of scrapping down the winter session this year.

Several Congress leaders have demanded that a session be held in the Parliament with necessary precautions at the earliest because they were various concerning issues involving the country that needed to be discussed with included the economy, the situation with China as well as the farmer protests.

Since 17 members of the Lok Sabha and 8 members of the Rajya Sabha had tested positive before the session started and many other members of Parliament who had tested negative initially later contracted the virus during the monsoon session is the reason why the Parliament was of the opinion that it was best to do away with the winter session for this year.

Not being able to hold the winter session owing to the pandemic situation in a time when there is a lot happening in the country that needs to be discussed and addressed can definitely be termed as a crisis that the country is dealing with due to the Covid-19.

Report By- Alifya

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