No Winter Session Due To COVID-19, Parliament To Next Meet For Budget Session In January, Congress Objects

There will be no winter session of Parliament this time because of the coronavirus outbreak, the government has officially said, ending speculation. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi has said in a letter to the Congress's Lok Sabha leader that all political parties favour scrapping the session to avoid any COVID-19 spread & jumping straight to the Budget session in January. But the Congress says it was never consulted. Joshi replied to Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chaudhary's letter demanding a session to discuss controversial new farm laws that are at the core of massive farmer protests on highways near Delhi. Chaudhary, the Congress's leader in the Lok Sabha, had stressed on the need to amend the laws, which he said were rammed through parliament by the government. Another senior Congress leader, Jairam Ramesh, tweeted that the government was "departing from the truth". He further added that the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Congress member Ghulam Nabi Azad, had not been consulted. Congress leader Shashi Tharoor also tweeted asking the government for ‘one good reason why it is not possible to have a parliament session from home?’