Winter session of Parliament: All-party meeting today. What’s on agenda?

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi will hold a meeting of floor leaders of political parties in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha today.

The meeting aims to strategize the legislative agenda and ensure a smooth functioning of the parliamentary proceedings during the Winter Session, which is scheduled to have 15 sittings until December 22. Senior BJP leaders like Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal are expected to attend the meeting.

There are currently 37 bills pending in Parliament, out of which 12 are listed for consideration and passing, and seven bills are slated for introduction, consideration, and passing. Among them are three bills to replace colonial-era criminal laws – the Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure, and the Evidence Act.

Another key bill pending in Parliament relates to the appointment of the chief election commissioner and election commissioners. The government did not push for its passage during the special session of the Parliament from the opposition and former chief election commissioners. The bill seeks to bring on a par the status of the CEC and ECs with that of the cabinet secretary. At present, they enjoy the status of a Supreme Court judge.

The report of the Ethics Committee on the “cash-for-query” allegations against Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra will be tabled in Lok Sabha on the first day of the Winter Session. According to the agenda papers circulated by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, Ethics Committee chairperson Vinod Kumar Sonkar will lay on the table of the House the panel’s first report, which was adopted with a 6:4 majority.

The members supporting the report included Preneet Kaur, the wife of former Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, who is now with the BJP.

The draft reportedly suggested “serious misdemeanours on the part of Mahua Moitra calls for severe punishment”.

“The Committee, therefore, recommends that Mahua Moitra, MP may be expelled from the Membership of the Seventeenth Lok Sabha. In view of the highly objectionable, unethical, heinous and criminal conduct of Mahua Moitra, the Committee recommend for an intense, legal, institutional inquiry by the Government of India in a time-bound manner,” the report is learnt to have said.

The House will have to adopt the report before the expulsion recommended by the panel comes into effect.