Ranchi: There will not be a winter session of Jharkhand Assembly this year owing to time constraints, the Hemant Soren government has said. Speaking to TOI over phone from his residence in Pakur, state minister of parliamentary affairs Alamgir Alam said plans are afoot to convene the Budget session of the assembly in the third week of February.
Alam said, “As of now, there are no plans to convene the winter session of the Jharkhand assembly. The second state supplementary budget, which is usually tabled in the winter session, will be tabled at the upcoming session before the laying of the budget document.”
In 2020, the Budget session was adjourned sine die three days before its closure in March in compliance with the nationwide lockdown imposed to contain the spread of Covid-19. The government had convened the monsoon session between September 18 and 22, where the first supplementary budget was debated and passed by the House at a time when several of its elected members missed the proceedings due to Covid infection.
In November, the government had convened a special one-day session to debate and pass a resolution seeking a separate religious code for tribal people who are practitioners of Sarna faith. The resolution was tabled by chief minister Hemant Soren on behalf of the state government and was sent to the Center after its passage. The Constitution mandates that a House must meet in six months.
While assembly speaker Rabindranath Mahto's phone remained switched off, assembly secretary Mahendra Prasad said: "The decision to convene an assembly session is taken by the cabinet and is approved by the Governor. There is no fixed date for holding the winter session. But as of now, we have not been informed about the convening of the winter session."
The decision to skip the winter session did not go down well with the BJP, the largest opposition party in the assembly. The BJP legislative party's whip and Bokaro MLA Biranchi Narayan said: “If the government could have held a gala celebration to mark its one year in office, special sessions and monsoon session when the pandemic was raging across Jharkhand, why could not it convene the winter session in December? They did not convene the session because they do not want to face the questions of the people through their elected representatives. It is unprecedented and shameful."