As the countdown to Parliament’s budget session, likely to start in the third week of February, begins, senior Central Ministers met here on Tuesday to strategise on ensuring that the slew of ordinances issued by the government are converted into law.
This comes a day after President Pranab Mukherjee cautioned the Modi government on its excessive use of ordinances, in the wake of strident Opposition criticism that this was an attempt to bypass Parliament and, even some voices of dissent from within the Union Cabinet.
A top government source told The Hindu : “The focus of today’s meeting was: since the Opposition is pursuing the ordinance issue so aggressively, let’s not be caught out on procedural issues.”
If the government is conscious of the need to deal with the negative publicity its eight ordinances have received, it is equally concerned that if some of the key ordinances do not become law within the mandatory six weeks from the start of the budget session, the situation could pose a problem. This is because no ordinance can be re-promulgated in the middle of a session and a budget session typically runs for roughly two-and-a-half months with a break.
The ordinances that received the maximum attention at the meeting were the Coal Mines Ordinance and the Insurance Ordinance, in that order. But Coal Secretary Anil Swarup — present at the meeting along with his counterparts from other Ministries — is reported to have assured the government that his department would be able to complete a substantial part of the work for which the ordinance was issued.
The Coal Ministry, for instance, is confident that it will be able to have some alternative in place by March 23 for the 42 functioning coal blocks where mining was cancelled by the Supreme Court, so that the flow of coal does not stop. (These were part of the 204 blocks in which mining was cancelled by the apex court — mining has not begun in the others). In addition, the Ministry will have the time to auction another 32 blocks not in the SC list.
