Union Budget To Be Presented on February 1

The Union Budget will be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1, a Sunday, at 11 am, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the Conference of Speakers and Presiding Officers of the Commonwealth (CSPOC), Birla said the Budget Session of Parliament will begin on January 28 with President Droupadi Murmu addressing a joint sitting of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

India is hosting the 28th CSPOC, which Birla said will be the largest in the forum’s history in terms of participation. The three-day conference will be held from January 14 to 16 and will focus on shared parliamentary values, democratic governance and institutional cooperation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the event on January 15 at the Central Hall of Samvidhan Sadan in the Parliament House complex. Birla is chairing the conference.

According to the Speaker, the event will be attended by 61 Speakers and Presiding Officers from Commonwealth countries and semi-autonomous parliaments, including the heads of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. He said this makes it the largest CSPOC conference so far.

Birla also said the conference is being organised in a paperless manner. An app and a web-based event management system have been developed for coordination, facilitation and information sharing.

Answering questions, he said Pakistan will not be participating in the conference, while Bangladesh currently does not have a Speaker as general elections are scheduled next month.

The CSPOC was established in 1969 on the initiative of then Canadian House of Commons Speaker Lucien Lamoureux. Since its inception, Canada has provided a secretariat to support the forum. CSPOC brings together Speakers and Presiding Officers from 53 national parliaments of Commonwealth nations and meets every two years to promote impartiality, fairness and strong parliamentary institutions.

India has earlier hosted the conference in 1971, 1986 and 2010.

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