PANAJI: A day or two-day long session of the state legislative assembly would be convened by the end of this year, which is expected to be the last assembly session of the present government.
Coming out with this information, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar said that the Governor Mridula Sinha would be requested to convene the particular assembly session as the Goods and Service Tax (GST) Bill needs to be ratified again, as also the state government is required to pass its supplementary demands and Appropriation Bill. It may be recalled that a day-long session of the state legislative assembly had earlier been convened on August 30, 2016, when the GST Bill was unanimously ratified by way of a resolution.
In order to pave way for a Presidential assent for the GST Bill – earlier passed by the Rajya Sabha and then the Lok Sabha, – at least 50 per cent of the Indian states need to pass the same.
Speaking further, the Chief Minister said that the date of convening the assembly session depends upon the response from the central government to the August 30 ratification of the GST Bill by the Goa legislative assembly. “Nevertheless, we also have to pass the supplementary demands and the Appropriation Bill, for which the session of the state legislative assembly could be convened somewhere by December 2016,” he mentioned. NT
