Parliament meets for the Budget Session between February 22 and May 07, 2010. The Parliament will adjourn for a recess between March 16 and April 12 to enable Standing Committees to examine the Demand for Grants. There will be a total of 35 sittings.
The Union Budget (2010-2011) is to be presented on February 26, 2010. This note provides brief guide on how the budget papers are organised, and how to find the exact information that a reader wants (expenditure on a particular scheme of interest, or total budget allocation of a ministry, for instance). For a related note on the Budget process, click here.
Commonly known as the Women's Reservation Bill, it seeks to reserve one-third of all seats for women in the Lok Sabha and the state legislative assemblies. Introduced by the UPA-I government in May 2008, it also provides that one third of the total number of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes shall be reserved for women of those groups. Similar Bills have been introduced thrice before in the late 90's but lapsed with the dissolution of their respective Lok Sabhas.
Many Acts passed by Parliament can be brought into force only after the government issues a gazette notification to that effect. In some cases, different sections may be brought into force on different dates, and this may even vary for different states. While this is often done for administrative reasons, criticisms have been raised that the government sometimes issues the notification only after a substantial delay, or does not do so at all. This study compiles data on enforcement of 497 Central Acts passed by Parliament between 1995 and 2008.
The Direct Taxes Code Bill seeks to consolidate and amend the law relating to all direct taxes and will replace the Income Tax Act, 1961. The Bill removes tax exemptions, and lowers income, corporate, and wealth tax rates. The draft Bill was released for public discussion on August 12th, 2009 by the Finance Minister Shri Pranab Mukherjee.
