THE budget session began as usual with the president’s address to joint session of parliament on January 31, 2019. After this, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha met and made obituary references and adjourned for the day. On the next day, minister for finance Piyush Goyal presented the interim budget 2019-20 in Lok Sabha and subsequently it was laid in Rajya Sabha, along with the Fiscal Policy Statement 2019-20. Rajya Sabha hardly conducted any transactions during this time due to protests by members on various issues.

A PUBLIC Interest Litigation (PIL) against recitation of Hindu religious shlokas in Kendriya Vidyalayas, filed by Veenayak Shah, an advocate from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, has been pending before the Supreme Court since January 2018. A bench of Justice R F Nariman and Justice Naveen Sinha decided to refer the case to a constitutional bench as the issue was of “seminal importance”. In the meantime, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, presenting arguments on behalf of the government, made a statement which assumed much importance.

ON February 11, AIDWA in Agartala organised a protest march demanding immediate removal of Manoj Kanti Deb, minister for sports and youth affairs from the cabinet and stringent legal action against him.  It was led by Rama Das, Krishna Rakshit, Panchali Bhattacharya and others. The AIDWA leadership said, if a minister has to face such a situation, that too while sharing stage with PM, it tells all about the safety and security of women in the state. They demanded that CM Biplab Deb must immediately sack Manoj Kanti Deb from the cabinet.

There are those, opponents of Marxism, who say: Marx had come to the conclusion that the revolution can be carried out only in the most highly developed countries whereas revolutions have actually occurred only in countries economically less developed than the most advanced Western countries. Consequently, Marx’s theory of proletarian revolution, they say, is wrong.

IT is cliché to say that the finance minister had to overcome ‘unprecedented challenges’ in making the annual budget. But,  T M Thomas Isaac had to literally overcome formidable and unprecedented challenges in preparing the annual budget of the state for 2019-20. The state’s economy as well as its exchequer was subjected to severe shocks in the recent past by natural and manmade disasters. The ‘note ban’ and the haphazard introduction of GST had severe adverse consequences on economic activities, especially small and medium enterprises and petty commodity producers.