Coal news and updates

Bills on coal, citizenship & insurance FDI in LS today?

The government is planning to introduce the Citizenship amendment bill in Lok Sabha in the next two days as it gave a notice on Wednesday for withdrawal of the pending bill on Thursday.

A day before the Pravasi Bharatiya meet opened in Gujarat in January, the President had cleared an ordinance amending the Indian Citizenship Act to merge the Person of Indian Origin (PIO) and Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) schemes. This ensures life-long Indian visa to PIOs, besides exempting them from police reporting.

Following the House rules, the government has to withdraw a pending bill before it can re-introduce a bill on the same subject. The government now needs to re-introduce the citizenship bill to replace the ordinance.

However, the rules for bills introduced in Rajya Sabha are different from those introduced in Lok Sabha. A bill introduced in Rajya Sabha can be rendered infructuous or invalid, once the same bill is passed by Lok Sabha.

Following that logic, the government now plans to bring in Lok Sabha all the three ordinances, including the one on increasing FDI cap in insurance, which it had earlier introduced in Rajya Sabha and cannot withdraw because of lack of numbers in the Upper House. These can be easily passed in Lok Sabha where the Modi government has a comfortable majority. After the bills are passed by Lok Sabha, these will override the related legislations that could not be withdrawn from Rajya Sabha, according to top government sources. Those invalid bills will continue to remain as property of the Upper House.

While the government plans to move ahead with the Citizenship bill on Thursday, it is also likely to move on the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Bill, 2014, that was introduced in Lok Sabha on December 10, 2014. This coal bill could come up in Lok Sabha for withdrawal and re-introduction in the next couple of days. The government plans to introduce all the six ordinances in Lok Sabha in the first week of March to turn them into proper laws.


source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com