Budget session longest, most fruitful time in Assembly: Speaker

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Assembly Speaker on Thursday claimed that this was the longest budget session of the Assembly in 23 years. Initially, the session was convened from March 16 to March 28 but due to the request of Delhi government and the legislators, the session was extended four times.

Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Niwas Goed was expressing his views with media after the session in the Assembly.

He said that as a result, the House conducted its business for 16 days instead of scheduled 9 days. According to Assembly Secretariat records, this House held 21 sittings in 1994 and 18 sittings in 1995 during a single session.

"The Session provided ample opportunities to all the members to raise and discuss issue relating to Delhi in general and their constituencies in particular," said the Speaker.

Lieutenant- governor Anil Baijal addressed the House on March 16 and the House adopted the motion of Thanks after discussing it over two days.

The Finance Minister, Manish Sisodia, presented the first ever outcome budget on March 21 and the Annual budget on March 22. The Budget was termed as the "Green Budget".

During the short duration discussion, AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj initiated discussion on sufferings caused to the people of Delhi due to sealing of premises and police brutality during the sealing process. Bhardwaj started second discussion on the situation arising out of severe water scarcity caused due to alarming level of ammonia in water released by Haryana.

The house adopted eight resolutions with regard to different public Issues.