JS budget session starts today
The Jatiya Sangsad goes into budget session today, and MPs from the opposition BNP may join the inaugural sitting, ending their long boycott of the House.
Talking to The Daily Star yesterday, some BNP lawmakers said they were making preparations to return to the House today. However, the BNP Parliamentary Party will take the final decision at a meeting this afternoon.
“Most probably, we will join the House proceedings tomorrow [today]," Moudud Ahmed, BNP standing committee member, told The Daily Star yesterday.
If the BNP lawmakers join the House sitting, they will speak on various important national issues like law and order, corruption of the ministers, share market crash and the government's failed foreign policy, Moudud added.
BNP lawmaker Mahbub Uddin Khokon submitted a notice to the parliament secretariat demanding discussion in the House on restoration of the caretaker government system.
Parliament secretariat sources said opposition MPs have submitted more than two dozen notices demanding discussions on other important issues including the unofficial ban on holding rallies and meetings in the capital.
Lawmakers from the BNP and its allies Jamaat-e-Islami and Bangladesh Jatiya Party have remained absent from the House for 83 consecutive sittings since March last year, said the sources.
They will lose their membership of parliament if they are absent from seven more consecutive sittings, the sources mentioned.
On return to parliament, the BNP legislators would not bring any bill or place any proposal on the caretaker government. They want the government to place a constitution amendment bill for installing a non-partisan election-time government.
If the opposition MPs return to the House, the present parliament will avert the record of not having the opposition in all its budget sessions. It already has a record of passing four budgets without the participation of opposition MPs.
No other parliament since the restoration of parliamentary democracy in 1991 had to face such a situation.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith is likely to place the budget for fiscal 2013-14 on June 6. This will be the last budget of the Awami League-led government.
This government, however, will not be able to implement the budget fully as its tenure expires at the middle of the next fiscal year.
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