Maha Assembly Budget Session Reduce Amid COVID-19 Scare

Amid new strain of coronavirus cases, Maharashtra Assembly's budget session has been reduced, it will now be held between March 1 and 10 instead of four weeks. The announcement was made by a business advisory committee in its meeting on Thursday.

"The budget will be presented on March 8, as many ministers of Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government have tested positive for the virus," Parliamentary Affairs Minister Anil Parab was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

"The state government will also table supplementary demands on the first day. The house will hold a discussion on governor's speech on March 2 while the next two days are reserved for discussion on supplementary demands," Parab further said.

Former chief minister and Leader of the Opposition Devendra Fadnavis walked out of the advisory committee meeting and said that they did not listen to the suggestions by the opposition. The BJP, he said, has demanded that the Budget Session must be held for four weeks.

"We have walked out of the meeting as this government is not keen to listen to us… The election of the Assembly speaker was not on the agenda of the meeting as Nana Patole has resigned as an assembly speaker to become the state Congress president. The election of Assembly speaker is still pending," Fadnavis said.

Maharashtra has been emerging as the hotbed of COVID-19 cases and restrictions have been imposed in many districts to curb the spread of the deadly disease. While the Union Health Ministry has already sent a multi-disciplinary team to the state along with other severely-hit states, many other states such as Delhi, Rajasthan and West Bengal have made the RT-PCR test mandatory for travellers from Maharashtra.