New Delhi: The budget session of the Delhi Assembly is set to begin on a stormy note on Monday, with the ruling BJP and opposition AAP confronting each other on the CAG report on the DTC and the “Mahila Samriddhi Yojana”.
Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, who also holds the finance portfolio, will table the first budget of the BJP government in more than 26 years.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) returned to power in Delhi after 1998, defeating the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Assembly polls held last month.
The five-day budget session will begin with a “kheer” ceremony on Monday.
The AAP has said in a statement that it will confront the BJP in the Assembly over its “betrayal” with women by not fulfilling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “guarantees” and a “brazen attack” on democracy.
“The BJP has betrayed Delhi’s women by denying them financial assistance despite inheriting a surplus budget from the previous AAP government. We will expose this betrayal in the Assembly as well as on the streets and across every household,” Leader of Opposition Atishi has said.
The BJP had promised in the run-up to the Delhi polls that it will provide a monthly amount of Rs 2,500 each to women from poor families under the Mahila Samriddhi Yojana. The city government has sanctioned Rs 5,100 crore for the scheme but the registration of beneficiaries is yet to start.
Atishi has also accused the BJP of establishing “dictatorship” in the Delhi Assembly, where opposition MLAs are suspended for raising people’s issues.
The AAP has said its MLAs will raise the issue of “systematic assault” on democracy within the Delhi Assembly.
“In the previous session, the BJP resorted to blatantly partisan treatment — suspending AAP MLAs for merely raising people’s issues while shielding its own MLAs from scrutiny,” the party has charged.
Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva has said the city government’s budget will be dedicated to people and the promises made to them will be fulfilled.
BJP MLAs have said they will corner the AAP over “corruption” and seek answers from it on the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) report on the Delhi Transport Corporation’s (DTC) performance during its 10-year rule in the city.
The second session (Budget Session) of the 8th Legislative Assembly will commence at 11 am on Monday, the Assembly secretariat has said in a statement.
The CAG report on the DTC’s functioning will be tabled in the House during the session. This would be the third CAG report to be tabled in the House.
The budget for 2025-26 will be presented on Tuesday (March 25). It will outline the government’s financial priorities and development agenda for the year.
A general discussion on the budget will be held on March 26, with the MLAs analysing financial allocations and policy initiatives.
The Assembly will deliberate and vote on the proposed budget on March 27. PTI VIT RC2020 global estimates of child labour show that 160 million children – 63 million girls and 97 million boys – were in child labour globally at the beginning of 2020, with child labour defined as work that is hazardous to child health and development and interferes with the right to education.
Several regions have made steady progress in reducing child labour; for example, the number of children in child labour in the Asia and the Pacific region declined from 62.1 million in 2016 to 48.7 million at the start of 2020. Even so, the region is likely to miss the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 8.7, to end child labour by 2025, unless the region achieves an average rate of reduction of 35 per cent per annum. It is estimated that, without accelerated efforts, the region is likely to have 33.4 million children in child labour in 2025 and 22.7 million children in child labour in 2030.
India has made rapid progress towards the universalization of school education, hand in hand with a decline in child labour. The Government of India and its development partners have put in place several initiatives to combat child labour over the past two decades. Several legislative measures to prevent child labour and to promote schooling have been enacted – for example, the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act 2016 to regulate child labour practices and the Protection
of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012. On the education front, in addition to the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 and the integration of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme into the National Food Security Act 2013, other more recent initiatives include the launch of the Digital
Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing (DIKSHA), a national digital platform for school education in 2017, and the National Initiative for School Heads’ and Teachers’ Holistic Advancement (NISHTHA), a teacher capacity building programme. In alignment with the National Education Policy 2020, the Government of India launched the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat 2021) and the PM Schools for Rising India (PM SHRI 2022) for the
upgradation of schools. Also released were the National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Stage (NCF FS) in 2022 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education in 2023.
