Parliament special session: Congress Parliamentary Party Chairperson Sonia Gandhi will convene a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Strategy Group on Tuesday (September 5) to discuss the strategy for the special session of the Parliament.
Meanwhile, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has also called a meeting of Opposition MPs of the newly I.N.D.I.A. bloc to discuss the joint strategy for the five-day special session of the Parliament.
Parliament's special session
The Parliament's special session will be held from September 18 to 22. The special session called by the government will have five sittings and members will be informed about the provisional calendar separately.
The Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha secretariats stated in a notification that the upcoming special session of Parliament will be held from September 18-22 without Question Hour or private members’ business. It further stated that the session will have five sittings and members will be informed about the provisional calendar separately.
"Members are informed that the Thirteenth Session of the Seventeenth Lok Sabha will commence on Monday, the 18th September 2023," the Lok Sabha Secretariat said in a bulletin on Saturday. "Members are informed that the Two Hundred and Sixty-First Session of the Rajya Sabha will commence on Monday, the 18th September 2023," the Rajya Sabha secretariat said.
First such special session under Modi govt
It will be the first such special session under the nine years of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government which had convened a special joint sitting of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha to mark the midnight GST roll-out on June 30, 2017. However, it will be a full-fledged session of five days this time with both Houses meeting separately as they usually do during sessions. Generally, three parliamentary sessions are held in a year- Budget, Monsoon and Winter sessions.
Sources said the "special session" could see parliamentary operations being shifted to the new Parliament building which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 28.
With the government not spelling out its agenda, speculation swirled that the government may push some showpiece bills in the run-up to some key state assembly polls followed by the all-important Lok Sabha election.
Sources, including in the ruling BJP, spoke of the possibility of bills on simultaneous general, state and local polls, something Modi has assiduously pushed, and reservation for women in directly elected legislatures like Lok Sabha and assemblies.
Both are constitutional amendment bills and will require passage with the support of two-third of members in both Houses.
