Budget 2022: Second part of budget session of Parliament begins today

Most of the two houses will continue with Sanctions, following the Covid-19 protocol seen in earlier parts of Parliament sessions. Both the Houses of Parliament will continue to follow social distancing norms by using both the chambers and the visitors’ galleries in the seating arrangement of the members.

According to the seating arrangement, Rajya SabhaThere are currently 237 members with eight vacancies out of a total of 245 MPs, 139 (3) MPs will be seated in the chamber while 98 others will be accommodated in the gallery at a given time.

Similarly, the Lok Sabha has a total of 538 members, of whom 282, including the Prime Minister, can sit in the chamber, while the remaining 258 can sit in the galleries at a given time.

The Rajya Sabha will get an additional 19 hours of working time in the second phase of the budget session of Parliament starting on Monday. The House will run from 11 am to 6 pm during the scheduled 19 sittings.

The House will have four days’ time for private members’ business and the Question Hour will continue for one hour, while the Zero Hour, which was reduced to half an hour during the first part, will now span a full hour in each sitting.

The budget session will resume after a 30-day holiday, during which department-related parliamentary standing committees (DRSCs) scrutinized the demands for grants of various ministries and departments.

As per the official guidelines, only sitting members of both the Houses of Parliament can enter the Central Hall which will be out of bounds for former MPs and visitors. Rajya Sabha will get an additional 19 hours of working time in the second part of the budget session of Parliament. The second part of the budget session will end on April 8. The first part of the budget session began on January 31 and ended on February 11.

(with inputs from agencies)