Union Ministers Pralhad Joshi (centre), Piyush Goyal (left) and Arjun Ram Meghwal at the Parliament House during the Budget session in New Delhi on Tuesday
New Delhi: The ongoing Budget Session of Parliament will be extended by a day and end on Saturday (February 10) with the government deciding to table a ‘White Paper’ comparing the state of the Indian economy before and after 2014.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi said the session will end on February 10 instead of February 9.
The decision to table the White Paper came following the announcement by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during her Budget speech. The move comes just weeks ahead of Lok Sabha elections and the Narendra Modi government is likely to use the opportunity to corner the Opposition.
Sources said the government told Opposition leaders during a meeting of the Business Advisory Committee that if they choose not to sit on Saturday, the MPs will have to come on Monday. It was then decided to hold proceedings on Saturday.
Sources said the White Paper will elaborate on “economic misery and its negative impacts” during the UPA regime besides highlighting the positive steps that could have been taken.
Presenting the interim Budget on February 1, she said the responsibility to mend the economy step by step and to put the governance systems in order was “enormous” after the UPA government’s defeat and the need of the hour was to give “hope to the people, to attract investments, and to build support for the much-needed reforms”.
“The crisis of those years has been overcome, and the economy has been put firmly on a high sustainable growth path with all-round development. It is now appropriate to look at where we were then till 2014 and where we are now, only for the purpose of drawing lessons from the mismanagement of those years,” she said announcing that a White Paper will be tabled.
There had been demands for publishing a White Paper from within the BJP soon after Modi assumed power in 2014 but the Prime Minister is reported to have prevailed upon his party colleagues that such a document would have eroded market’s confidence on the country domestically and internationally.
Sources said the change in mind came as the government now feels confident to release the document as it would not have an adverse impact on the economy.
However, the Opposition leaders believe that the White Paper is an attempt to score political points ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.