Centre plans 2-week Monsoon session | Economic Times

New Delhi: The Centre is planning a two-week monsoon session of Parliament with limited working hours on alternate days from the last week of August till the first week of September. According to rules, the Centre has to call a Parliament session at least once in six months.The budget session was curtailed and adjourned on March 23 after the Covid-19 outbreak. The Centre would need to call the next session by September 23. Sources said the government is planning to hold a two-week session with sittings on alternate days. This would mean that there are sittings for limited hours on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and the rest of the week will be kept for the complete sanitisation of Parliament House.A senior official said: “Discussions are on to see how we can curtail the number of hours of sitting. The House does not really need to function from 11 am to 6 pm. We could do away with the Zero Hour or if the Opposition agrees with the Question Hour too on certain days.”Earlier, both Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu had asked officials to undertake an exercise on the seating capacity of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha and figure out if the Central Hall or Vigyan Bhawan plenary hall could be considered as alternate venues. “The final decision is that the venue has to be Parliament House. With most members reluctant to attend virtually, we are looking at how to seat them and where.” The initial analysis revealed that on a given day Parliament sees 300 MPs inside the House. “This would mean seating 300 people following social-distancing norms. Seeing this scenario, we can go with the earlier plan of shifting the Rajya Sabha to Lok Sabha chambers and the Lok Sabha to Central Hall. This way both Houses can have sittings on the same days and alternate days can be kept for complete sanitisation.”According to sources, both the presiding officers are likely to hold discussions with senior party leaders to see if they could encourage members to attend virtually as far as possible. As first reported by ET in its June 3 edition, a hybrid session would be the way out. This would mean giving the option of virtual attendance and physical attendance to MPs. “The e-portal facility, which is hosted on the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha websites for MPs of both Houses of Parliament, would be used for this purpose,” said the official.