In a bid to end the confrontation in the Joint Parliamentary Committee, its chairman P C Chacko, under opposition fire, on Friday expressed willingness to consider amendments to the controversial draft report on 2G spectrum scam which gave clean a chit to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sumitra Mahajan will be appointed Speaker of the 16th Lok Sabha on Friday. Other key parliamentary posts like that of Leader of Opposition, deputy Speaker, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and head of the all-important standing committee on finance will be keenly contested.
On Tuesday, the 32-member Parliamentary Committee is understood to have met officials of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, Reserve Bank of India, stock exchanges, various brokers, Unit Trust of India, Life Insurance Corporation and State Bank of India. The committee is expected to meet officials of the finance ministry next week.
The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance on Saturday demanded to know how the Joint Parliamentary Committee's draft report on 2G spectrum allocation issue had exonerated Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram without examining them and appealed to all members of the committee to reject the document.
Disruption is totally unacceptable in Parliamentary system, the President said.
Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh puts it succinctly: "Arun Jaitley was every non-BJP person's favourite BJP-ite."
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It is normal practice for Indian governments to go to parliament for spending not included in the annual budget.
Indian elections are won and lost on 'negative' imageries and campaigns - but not certainly on 'negativity' as a political trait and electoral creed, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Cabinet will take a decision on a conciliation offer from Vodafone.
With the Comptroller and Auditor General reports providing ammunition to the Opposition to attack the prime minister, Congress on Friday dismissed Bharatiya Janata Party's demand for his resignation while party chief Sonia Gandhi held a "strategy meeting" with senior ministers and party leaders.
Notwithstanding strong demand by Bharatiya Janata Party members for calling Finance Minister P Chidambaram, the Joint Parliamentary Committee examining 2G spectrum allocation scam is unlikely to call him or any other minister as witnesses.
The Joint Parliamentary Committee has found not a "single file or record" to show any culpability of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram in the 2G spectrum allocation, its chairman P C Chacko said justifying the clean chit to them in the draft report.
The Centre is likely to cut budgetary support to the railways by around Rs 5,000-10,000 crore for 2018-19, out of the total budgeted GBS of Rs 53,060 crore. Due to this cut in GBS, the railways is likely to depend more on borrowings, asset monetisation, and internal generation to meet the capex target of Rs 1.465 trillion for the current year.
'In his 2014 election campaign, Mr Modi had boasted that he would apply the Gujarat model to the rest of India. We just have to ensure he doesn't start with Parliament,' says Shashi Tharoor in this fascinating excerpt from his new book, The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi And His India.
Vajpayee was elected chairman of the BJP parliamentary party.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has rejected Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha's demand that he depose before the Joint Parliamentary Committee in the 2G spectrum scam.
Describing the functioning of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on 2G as "scandalous", Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha on Tuesday demanded that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram appear before it for the truth to come out.
Concerned over rising incidents of tax evasion, a Parliamentary Committee on Thursday asked the government to keep a close watch on high spending individuals and also take steps to reduce tax arrears.
External Affiars and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday said the government cannot indulge in 'reckless borrowing' and did not have Parliamentary mandate to tweak taxes.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday expressed dissatisfaction over the government's response to the Aircel-Maxis controversy, allegedly involving Home Minister P Chidambaram's family members, and said it would demand a discussion on the issue in both Houses.At the weekly BJP Parliamentary Party meeting, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley briefed the members about the Aircel-Maxis issue.
This year the meeting will take place from Tuesday to Thursday in Lahore. The Cairn Group is composed of World Trade Organisation members pressing for further agricultural reform within the WTO.
Due to Opposition anger over the non-availability of the finance minister during discussion on the Finance Bill in the Parliament.
The appointments committee of the Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi cleared Bhalla's appointment as OSD in the ministry with immediate effect.
Government's effort to end impasse in Parliament by reaching out to BJP for early passage of key finance bills on Friday came a cropper as the opposition indicated that it is unlikely to cooperate unless it is assured that JPC chairman P C Chacko's draft report on 2G will be rejected.
The government will cut the central sales tax rate to 3 per cent from 4 per cent from April 1 through a notification, as announced by Finance Minister P Chidambaram in his Budget speech.
Even as Bharatiya Janata Party MPs are boycotting the Joint Parliamentary Committee looking into the 2G spectrum scam, the panel's chairman P C Chacko has ruled out summoning of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Government sources said on Wednesday that the prime minister has informed presiding officers of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha about the arrangement. The session of Parliament which began this morning is a 10-day affair.
Bharatiya Janata Party members of the Joint Parliamentary Committee examining the 2G spectrum issue on Thursday boycotted the meeting of the panel in protest against Chairman P C Chacko's refusal to accede to their demand to summon the prime minister and the finance minister.
Catch all the action from the Monsoon session of Parliament, LIVE
Pranab Mukherjee appears set to be the next President with his candidature announced on Friday by the ruling UPA and endorsed swiftly by supporting parties Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party amid indications that he will gather more support ahead.
Parliament's standing committee on finance, headed by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha, on Thursday finalised its report on the Companies Bill, 2011.
Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Assam and the Union Territory of neighbouring Puducherry are likely to go to polls in April or May.
An all-party meeting on Monday failed to hammer out a consensus over the controversial Insurance Bill, which was scheduled to be taken up in Rajya Sabha.
On instructions from Congress president Sonia Gandhi, senior Union ministers were asked to brief Congress MPs on the allocation of coal blocks and the CAG report.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress were on Wednesday locked in a confrontation in the Joint Parliamentary Committee on 2G scam with members of the main opposition storming out of its meeting over the issue of calling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram and threatening to quit from it.
Breaking a long tradition, the PMO has ensured that specific divisions in each ministry are allocated to junior ministers.
The parliamentary standing committee on finance has proposed a Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) co-ordination mechanism to monitor foreign investments in the stock market.
Ending its nearly two-month-old boycott, Bharatiya Janata Party members on Thursday attended the meeting of Joint Parliamentary Committee on the 2G scam and said they would continue to press for summoning of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram as witnesses.
Full list of the rejigged Union Council of Ministers
In the concluding part of the series, Y V Reddy, argues that the proposal strikes at the functioning of federalism and the basic structure of the Constitution, which has served us well so far.
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