Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said the government is working out a new Bill on cryptocurrency which will be placed in the ongoing session of Parliament after approval of the Union Cabinet. The ongoing winter session is scheduled to end on December 23. Replying to a series of questions in the Rajya Sabha, she said the new Bill takes into account the rapidly changing dimensions in virtual currency space, and incorporate features of the earlier Bill that could not be taken up.
The Lok Sabha passed the Bill with 311 votes in favour and 80 against it a little past midnight.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal mounted a blazing campaign in the hot summer after he was released from the Tihar jail on interim bail on May 10, drawing huge crowds at rallies and roadshows, but it proved insufficient to propel his Aam Aadmi Party past the Bharartiya Janata Party challenge in the national capital.
The bill, which seeks to give citizenship to refugees from the Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Zorastrian communities fleeing religious persecution from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh was passed in Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday blamed India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's "two major blunders" -- declaring a ceasefire without winning the entire Kashmir and taking the issue to the United Nations -- for the sufferings of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday appealed to the opposition for the unanimous passage of the women's reservation bill and said shortcomings, if any, can be rectified at a later date.
In the session which concluded on Wednesday, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan preferred to carry on with the listed business even as protesting Congress members stormed the Well and shouted slogans, many times walking out of the House for the day.
At the same time, the amendment bill makes it clear that 'no application for inclusion of name in the electoral roll shall be denied and no entries in the electoral roll shall be deleted for inability of an individual to furnish or intimate Aadhaar number due to such sufficient cause as may be prescribed'.
The unusual timing of the session has left everyone wondering, even though the main standout feature on the listed agenda is a special discussion on Parliament's journey of 75 years starting from the "Samvidhan Sabha" (Constituent Assembly).
Dominic Xavier asks if the bills will really benefit farmers or if this is a ploy by the Modi government to push the agricultural sector towards privatisation.
The records of the debate are expected to be sent to the Parliamentary Standing Committee examining the Lokpal Bill
What some of our leaders were up to on Wednesday, September 20, 2023.
Rajya Sabha passed the Salary, Allowances and Pension of Members of Parliament (Amendment) Bill, 2020. It had got the approval of Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
Goel's tenure was till December 5, 2027, and he would have become Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) after incumbent Rajiv Kumar retired in February next year.
The provisions in the Constitution (128th Amendment) Bill make it clear that the women's reservation will come into effect only after the delimitation exercise or the redrawing of constituencies taking into account the data of the census conducted once the bill becomes a law.
'We wanted the PM to speak, and he just refused to -- now we have the opportunity, not just in the Lok Sabha, but also in the Rajya Sabha, to lay the government on the mat.'
Opposition parties, though resigned to the fact that they lack the numbers to defeat or stall the bill in the two Houses, have decided upon different tactics that they would employ to highlight their reasons for opposing it.
"The agenda as published at the moment, is much ado about nothing - all this could have waited till Winter session in November. I am sure the legislative grenades are being kept up their sleeves to be unleashed at the last moment as usual. Parde ke peeche kuch aur hai!" he said.
'The expeditious enactment of labour codes and strategic measures to bridge the skills jobs gap are critical.'
The first meeting of the newly-constituted joint committee comprising ministers and civil society activists to draft the Lokpal Bill will be held on Saturday.
The SAD also castigated the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party for allegedly betraying farmers by not opposing the passage of the bills in Lok Sabha.
The citizenship rights will protect their cultural, linguistic, and social identity and it will also ensure economic, commercial, free movement, and property purchase rights.
Lok Sabha could function for only 45 hours this Budget Session against its scheduled 133.6 hours because of daily disruptions and frequent adjournments, a think tank data has shown.
The Rajya Sabha on Tuesday passed a bill on protection of rights of transgenders after a motion to refer it to a Select Committee of the Upper House was defeated.
The bill proposes to make university or college as a unit instead of department for the purpose of providing reservation for filling teachers posts in central education institutions.
The proposed law seeks bars on storing and processing of personal data by entities without the explicit consent of an individual. It, however, provides for exemptions for "reasonable purposes" such as "prevention and detection of any unlawful activity including fraud, whistle-blowing, merger and acquisitions, network and information security, credit scoring, recovery of debt, processing of publicly available personal data and the operation of search engines".
With the tagline "Na duri hai, na khai hai, Modi hamara bhai hai, (there's no detachment, there's no chasm, Modi is our brother)", the campaign aims to attract at least 1,000 Muslim women towards the party.
Rajya Sabha members Mausam Noor and Priyanka Chaturvedi have written to Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar, complaining about 'sloganeering' from the visitors' gallery of the House on September 21 and requesting him to take action in the matter.
A 7-hr debate was held over the contentious bill. Oppn amendments rejected.
The bill was passed by a voice vote after Shah sought to allay concerns raised by the Opposition, which claimed the draft law was "draconian".
The BJP's top leadership will drop its MPs found to be facing anti-incumbency, according to its internal surveys -- a pivotal tactic to ensure the party achieves its target of winning 370 seats.
The bench has divided the hearing on Kejriwal's petition against his arrest into two parts. His main petition challenges his arrest by the ED and seeks it to be declared as illegal, while the second aspect pertains to grant of interim bail keeping in mind the ongoing Lok Sabha polls. The court has reserved the order on the issue of grant of interim bail.
'I have had occasion to work with Bill Gates as a young engineer, and am one of the few people in India who has interacted with Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison.' 'I have worked with Andy Grove at Intel, so I know what bright and great people are like, but Modiji is a different level of perfection.'
Sushmita Dev said it would have been better if there were more women MPs in the panel.
The bill also makes it mandatory for the Delhi government to take the opinion of the L-G before any executive action.
Overall this is the eighth charge sheet filed by the ED in this case in which it has arrested 18 people so far. Last week, a similar complaint was filed by the agency against BRS leader and former Telangana chief minister Chandrashekar Rao's daughter K Kavitha and four others.
Chandrababu Naidu's victory comes barely eight months after his political career seemingly crashed in September 2023 when the YSRCP government arrested him in an alleged corruption case.
Under the provision of the Constitution, bills passed by the Lok Sabha during the course of its five year term and pending in the Rajya Sabha get lapsed with the dissolution of the House of the People. Separately, any bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha remained a property of the House irrespective of the fate of Lok Sabha.
The Bharatiya Janata Party swept Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh on Sunday inflicting a resounding defeat on the Congress to tighten its stranglehold in the Hindi heartland, setting the tone for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
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