Assembly session to begin on Monday

The Assembly begins more than a month-long session on Monday.

The House will consider the budgetary demands for grants for the current year and bills to replace seven ordinances and other legislation during the session. Of 28 days of sittings, 13 days would be spent for the discussions of demands for grants and eight days for official legislation, Speaker G. Karthikeyan said.

The House will take up the Abkari (Amendment) Bill and the Kerala Municipalities (Amendment) Bill on the first day of sittings and Bills seeking to amend the Travancore-Cochin and Madras Acts on Hindu religious institutions and endowments on the second day. As per current schedule, the session is to conclude July 18.

The Speaker told the media here on Friday that the legislature was taking several steps to use Malayalam in its functioning. About 95 per cent of the files in the Legislature Secretariat now were in Malayalam. Whenever possible, orders were being issued in Malayalam. A vocabulary of words used in the Legislature Secretariat alone was being compiled.

Mr. Karthikeyan announced that the centre for parliamentary studies and training of the Legislature would be starting a certificate course in Parliamentary practice and proceedings shortly. This would be the first time that such a course is being offered by a State legislature in the country.

Persons with minimum qualification of higher secondary or equivalent could join the course to be conducted as distance education programme. It would provide an opportunity to the general public, students and public men to study about the functioning of legislatures. The course would incorporate seminars, visit to the Legislature and workshops.