Just nine days? Telangana may witness its shortest House session 

HYDERABAD: For the first time in the history of united Andhra Pradesh and newly-formed Telangana, the budget session of Telangana Legislature will be just for nine days. Earlier, the Budget session used to transact business for a month or even more.The reason behind the short session is that the treasury benches wanted the Appropriation Bill to be passed on March 27 as Governor ESL Narasimhan would be leaving abroad on March 28. The Governor signing the Appropriation Bill is mandatory otherwise the functioning of state treasury comes to a standstill.

As per the business charted out in Monday’s Business Advisory Committee (BAC) meeting, finance minister E Rajender will introduce the Budget on March 15. The next will not be a working day and the discussion on Budget will be taken after Ugadi festival as the Principal Opposition Congress insisted that they want to attend their party’s meeting at Delhi and they needed a non-working day on March 17.

Starting March 19, the House will run till March 27 continuously and the Appropriation Bill will be passed on March 27. In united Andhra Pradesh, the Budget session of Assembly used to transact business for nearly 40 days. After the introduction of Budget, the House would be adjourned and there would not be any business the next two days. “The House used to convene two days after the Budget is introduced as the legislators will get a chance to go through the Budget and discuss,’’ a senior member said, adding that the same practice is followed even today.

However, the number of days to discuss about the allocations to various departments have come down drastically, the member said. After formation of separate Telangana, the Budget session was reduced to 16 days due to decrease in the number of elected members and other factors. “However, this is for the first time that the Budget session is being held for just nine days,’’ another senior legislator said, adding that there would be very less scope for a full fledged discussion on the allocations.

The TRS reportedly come up with a proposal that the House be convened after the Appropriation Bill is passed as it wanted to put before the House some issues relating to the government’s schemes but the opposition members did not agree. “We cannot discuss about the Budget and allocations once the Appropriation Bill is passed,” a member said.