The Lok Sabha was adjourned for the day in the first half of the sitting itself and at the end of a third week of protests by Oppositions MPs on the Pesgasus snooping issue and the three contentious farm laws, but managed to pass The Taxation Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, and The Central Universities (Amendment) Bill, 2021, without debate or discussion.
The House was adjourned till a few minutes after it convened, with Speaker Om Birla urging the protesting members to participate in the Question Hour. But continuing protests saw the House being adjourned till 12 noon. When it reconvened, Rajendra Agarwal, as presiding officer, asked the protesters to participate in discussions on the two Bills listed.
Leader of the Congress legislature party in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary spoke before both the Bills were passed, urging the government to “give up” its ‘obduracy’ in not considering the demands of the Opposition.
To this, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal said it was the Opposition that was blocking discussions, including the one proposed by Revolutionary Socialist Party MP N.K. Premachandran on the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the midst of it, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman moved The Taxation Laws (Amendment) Bill for consideration and passing. It had been introduced in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.
Making a short statement before the Bill was put to vote, she said the Bill was a clarificatory amendment. The 2012 Finance Act provision that amended the Income Tax Act, making offshore transactions involving Indian assets (including those set up prior to the law being enacted) liable for tax in India, was considered “bad in law” as far as the BJP was concerned. Former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had set up a high-level committee after the Modi government came to power in 2014 to look into the issue, as the BJP and later the government did not support retrospective taxation. The Act had been caught up in litigation in courts in India and abroad and the government was waiting for the conclusion of these actions to bring law scrapping the retrospective tax. The Bill was passed by voice vote and without debate.
Ladakh Central varsity
Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan moved The Central Universities (Amendment) Act for setting up a Central university in Ladakh. He said this would help in the emotional integration of the people of Ladakh, Leh and Kargil with the rest of the country. The university, to be named Sindhu University, would be over a 110-acre campus.
Again, this Bill too was passed in the din with no discussion.
The House was adjourned for the day after the passage of the two Bills.
