By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, AUG 17, 2014: THE Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Urban Development and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation, Mr M.Venkaiah Naidu, has said that on the whole, this first Budget Session was satisfactory and several important issues of national importance like, price rise, MNREGA, flood and drought, UPSC-CSAT, AP Reorganization, atrocities against women, Communal violence, Gaza issue, Efforts of Indian government to get stranded Indians back, Encephalitis, Sugar cane farmers issue, Swaraswathi nadhi issue were discussed along with working of several ministries.

He said that one particular reality of the composition of Parliament being that the ruling coalition is in minority in the Rajya Sabha, it offered both an opportunity and challenges in different ways to different political coalitions.

For the ruling coalition, it offered a challenge of working with the majority opposition and for the opposition – the opportunity of joining hands with the government rising above political considerations for the good of the nation, particularly, when the economy is not in a good shape.

He said that the Government had consciously planned for a record 28 sittings over a session duration of 39 days. This was to enable sufficient time for the opposition and other parties to raise various issues of public concern in both the Houses. I am happy this yielded good results.

The Minister said, "I would like to provide a brief summary of major functional attributes of this budget session vis-à-vis similar post-election budget sessions of 2004 and 2009:

(# Including Central Universities (Amendments) Bill 2014 included for introduction today, * as on 13.8.2014 and need to be updated appropriately)

In Lok Sabha 166 hrs 56 minutes of session was held out of which, 14 hrs and 23 minutes were lost due to interruptions. However, the time lost was gained by 27 hrs and 10 minutes as house sat late to compensate the loss. Similarly in Rajya Sabha a total of 140 hrs was done out of which 21 hrs and 22 minutes were lost and a total of 38 hrs and 12 minutes were gained as house sat late to compensate the loss.

Broadly, statistics suggest that productivity of Lok Sabha has significantly improved in respect of working hours and time lost in comparison to that of 2004 and 2009

One of the landmark achievements of this session has been that the government has shown unmatched unanimity in passing the Constitution Amendment Bill and Judicial Appointments bill. For Various committees and Govt. bodies in which Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members represent, "I am happy to share that most of them have been elected unanimously without elections. I thank all the political parties in this context for getting the land mark legislation passed by this House," he added.