Governor Mooshahary to address house
By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: The Budget Session of the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly, which starts on Friday, has reserved only two days for private members’ business.
Out of the eleven working days of the Session, only two days have been allotted for private members’ business which has caught everyone by surprise.
The Budget session would commence with Governor RS Mooshahary addressing the House on Friday.
Chief Minister Dr Mukul Sangma would reply to the Governor’s Address on March 14.
The Chief Minister who is also in charge of Finance would present the State Budget for the next fiscal year (2012-2013) on March 19. Dr Sangma would reply on the budget discussion on March 21. The final day of the budget session is on March 23.
Meanwhile, taking strong cognizance on the short budget session, Opposition Leader Conrad K Sangma said that they would be raise the issue on the floor of the House over the Government’s decision to convene a short Budget session and reserving only two days for the private members’ business.
“We have always expressed over disappointment on this particular point. There were 16 working days in the last year’s Budget session. But this year it is worse as there are only 11 working days,” Sangma said on Thursday.
He said that in the past technically the Budget session would be more than one month.
“This decision of fixing the number of working days is being done by the Chief Minister and his Cabinet. In fact, it is the sole prerogative of the Chief Minister,” the Opposition leader said while replying to a query.
When asked about the role of the Business Advisory Committee (BAC), Sangma said that the role of BAC was to fix the list of businesses as per the time frame given by the Government.
“The BAC has no authority to increase the number of days of the session,” he added.
When asked about the issues they were going to take up in this session, the Opposition Leader said that they would be raising a number of important issues right from unemployment and price rise, he said.
“We would also raise issues of corruption, law and order, environment, illegal migration, education and traffic problems among a host of other issues,” he added.