Himachal Pradesh: 8 legislations introduced in House

The three Bills include The Factories (Himachal Pradesh Amendment) Bill, 2020; The Industrial Disputes (Himachal Pradesh Amendment) Bill, 2020; and The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Himachal Pradesh Amendment Bill, 2020. All three will be replacing ordinances promulgated in recent months without any modification.

Another ordinance being replaced by a bill is The Himachal Pradesh Regulation of Salaries and Allowances of Different Categories in Certain Exigencies Bill, 2020. It was promulgated on April 11 to reduce the salaries and allowances etc of MLAs and some other dignitaries in the state, in order to raise resources to deal with the situation created by the Covid pandemic.

Other Bills include The Himachal Pradesh Motor Vehicle Taxation (Amendment) Bill, 2020 aimed at better management of tax regime and prevention of tax evasion; The Himachal Pradesh Co-operative Societies (Amendment) Bill, 2020 for “reforms in the co-operative sector”; and two bills proposing amendments in municipal laws which will allow urban areas with a population of forty thousand and above to be declared as municipal corporations.

CPI(M) MLA Rakesh Singha said insufficient time was being given to the members to read the introduced Bills and propose amendments if any. His conscience did not allow him to express approval for the bills without examining them, he said. Speaker Vipin Parmar said that copies of the legislations had been delivered to the residences of the MLAs three days ago to which Singha replied that he had only received them a day ago.

‘Youth shying away from agriculture’

The House discussed the need to enhance agriculture to generate employment on a resolution moved by Jawalumukhi MLA Ramesh Chand Dhawala. He said that young people in the state were unwilling to practice agriculture and were moving to other states seeking jobs.

“The Covid pandemic forced many of them to return home and the state government needs to identify their skills and accordingly encourage them to earn a livelihood through primary sectory activities such as agriculture, horticulture and dairy farming,” he added.