The Uttarakhand government on Tuesday said it lacks enough business to extend the tenure of the ongoing seven-day budget session of the state assembly.

State finance minister Premchand Agrawal said this in his response to the opposition’s demand for extending budget session days.

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Replying to the demand raised by the Leader of the Opposition in the House Yashpal Arya, the minister said, “Our business for the House is too less in this session. Our effort is to finish the entire business within the stipulated tenure of the budget session.”

Agarwal informed that this assembly session will have only three bills to be passed by the house apart from questions to be raised by the legislators.

Earlier Arya demanded that the state needs to address several impending issues that require discussion in the house.

“We demand that the assembly budget session must be extended so that we can raise public issues pertaining to Uttarakhand in the house. However it’s been seen that the government has been continuously reducing session time in the past nine years. The Uttarakhand government doesn’t want to discuss the state’s big public problems.

“Today the state is reeling under big issues like domicile, land law, corruption and pre-paid smart meters. Apart from this sugarcane farmers have not been paid their dues till date” said Yashpal Arya.

Arya further said “Several disaster affected areas in the state are yet to see rehabilitation works to be carried out by the state government. Besides these there are many more issues that need to be discussed in the house but the state government is not interested in these matters.”

When asked for his response on the statement made by the state finance minister as to lack of business in the house, Arya said that the government is intentionally ignoring the issues being raised by the opposition. “Are issues raised by opposition not big enough to be taken up in the house? They want to run away from public problems from being taken up in the assembly” said Arya, adding that the government must reconsider its decision.

Meanwhile, the Uttarakhand assembly budget session began on Tuesday with the governor’s speech in the morning. As the governor began his speech, the opposition leader demanded from the speaker to raise the session tenure as they have enough issues to discuss in the house. As the speaker refused to entertain the opposition’s demand letter created chaos in the house with the slogan “Governor go back.”