This story is from July 4, 2020

Goa: Assembly session cut to one day

The monsoon session of the state legislative assembly has been shorted from two weeks to one day — on July 27 — thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. Speaker Rajesh Patnekar on Friday held an all-party meeting at the assembly complex, in which the opposition said that it would allow the government to take a vote on account for four months as it’s a Constitutional requirement, but not let the government pass the budget in a one-day session.​
Goa: Assembly session cut to one day
Goa assembly (File photo)
PANAJI: The monsoon session of the state legislative assembly has been shorted from two weeks to one day — on July 27 — thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. Speaker Rajesh Patnekar on Friday held an all-party meeting at the assembly complex, in which the opposition said that it would allow the government to take a vote on account for four months as it’s a Constitutional requirement, but not let the government pass the budget in a one-day session.
Friday’s meeting was attended by deputy speaker Isidore Fernandes, chief minister Pramod Sawant, legislative affairs minister Mauvin Godinho, leader of opposition Digambar Kamat, Goa Forward Party MLA Vijai Sardesai, MGP MLA Ramkrishna ‘Sudin’ Dhavalikar, and NCP MLA Churchill Alemao.

“Everyone arrived at a consensus to have a one-day monsoon assembly session instead of two weeks,” Patnekar said. “The full-fledged session will be held in December.”
Meanwhile, Sardesai said that the legislature secretary advised against holding meetings.
“I had scheduled a budget committee meeting to find out whether the budget is alive or dead,” Sardesai said. “At the moment, according to me, it’s dead. We allowed the government to take a vote on account in the past four months. But with the CM announcing austerity measures, there’s a need to reset the budget. We can’t allow it to be passed in its current form.”
The speaker said that the agenda for the one-day session would be decided by the business advisory committee (BAC) 12 days before the session. “The BAC will decide whether the vote on account on budget or full budget will be passed now or in December,” he said.

Patnekar also held a meeting with assembly staff, and learnt that a typical session involves at least 1,000 persons in attendance daily. These include MLAs, ministers’ staff, MLAs’ staff, assembly employees, police and fire personnel, reporters, etc. “Even if we don’t permit the general public, we can’t manage 1,000 persons a day.”
Sardesai said that the decision to have a one-day session was taken because the government has failed to protect the people of the state, and that now the time has come for the people to protect themselves.
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