Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman speaks in the Lok Sabha, during the second part of the Budget Session. (PTI)
Parliament Budget Session 2022 Live Updates: The second leg of the Budget Session of Parliament resumed after a break Monday. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to move the two Jammu and Kashmir Appropriation Bills in the Rajya Sabha.
Earlier, the Lok Sabha had passed a Rs 1.12 lakh crore Budget for the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir for 2022-23 on March 14. The departments of education, home, public health engineering, and power development saw the highest allocations for the financial year 2022-23.
On March 16, Congress president Sonia Gandhi asked the government to “put an end to the systematic interference of Facebook and other social media giants in the electoral politics of the world’s largest democracy”. Raising the issue during the Zero Hour in the Lok Sabha Wednesday, Gandhi said global companies like Facebook and Twitter are being used to “shape political narrative by leaders of political parties and their proxies”.
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Budget Session news: Parliament resumes after short break; Nirmala Sitharaman to move J&K Appropriation Bill in Rajya Sabha; Follow this space for latest updates
New Delhi: Parliamentarians in the Lok Sabha, during the second part of the Budget Session, at Parliament House in New Delhi, Tuesday, March 15, 2022. (PTI)
Rajya Sabha to get 19 hours of additional time for business in 2nd part of Parliament’s Budget session
With the Budget session of Parliament resuming on Monday, the Rajya Sabha will get 19 hours of additional time for business over the earlier schedule, officials said on Saturday.
The House will sit from 11 am till 6 pm with a one-hour lunch break during the 19 scheduled sittings, while it sat from 10 am till 3 pm during the first part of the session.
With this increase in the sitting time of one hour per sitting, the Upper House will get 64 hours and 30 minutes for transacting the government’s legislative business and taking up the issues of public importance during the second part of the session, according to an official statement.
House Panel seeks non-lapsable fund for defence, flags low R&D spending
Parliament’s Standing Committee on Defence argued for the creation of a “Non-Lapsable Defence Modernisation Fund – Defence Renewal Fund” to be used exclusively for the procurement of key defence assets at critical times.
In one of its reports submitted last week, the panel said a draft Cabinet note for the constitution of such a fund is under consideration. This should be created “at the earliest so that procurement can be done unhampered without pursuing for funds to receive at Supplementary or Additional Grants stages”, it said.
Regarding the overall defence budget of the country, the committee noted that the Defence Ministry must ask the Finance Ministry “not to curtail the projected amount” as it results in “reprioritisation of schemes/activities which might end up compromising with the operational preparedness of the Defence Services.”