Budget session after February 20: Azad

Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said the Budget session of Parliament would not begin before February 20 and would not clash with the polling dates for Assembly polls in Haryana, Jharkhand and Bihar.

The date of the session would be decided by the Cabinet committee on parliamentary affairs, he said. "It is too early to talk about the date of the session," he added. While Haryana will go to the polls on February 3, voting will be on February 3, 15 and 23 in Bihar and Jharkhand.

Asked about the possibility of a change in Assembly election dates in view of the Budget session, Azad said those dates were final and "there is no need for changing them."

The Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party had asked for a change in polling dates alleging that since Railway Minister Lalu Prasad would be involved with the election, the railway budget would suffer.

The Election Commission had refused to change the dates, saying there would be no problem.

There were also fears that Prasad might use the opportunity to announce sops, aimed at the states going to the polls, especially Bihar, thereby circumventing the model code of conduct. The logic was not accepted by the poll panel.

A third argument advanced by the Opposition had been that the elections be conducted in one phase instead of three, so that the RJD would not have time to mobilise their "muscle power" across the state. The EC felt that the argument was not proper, and that the Commission's central observers would deal with the situation if something like this happened.

To a question about the telecast of the meetings of parliamentary standing committees of various ministries on the pattern of parliamentary proceedings, Azad said that it was not possible to telecast the proceedings of standing committees.

There was no unanimity on this issue among the political parties, he said explaining that neither chairman nor members was allowed to talk to the media about the proceedings till their reports were tabled in Parliament.