Bihar assembly winter session begins, 2nd budget tabled

The five-day winter session of the Bihar Assembly began on Monday, with members paying tributes to political leaders, who died earlier this year, and finance minister Sushil Kumar Modi presenting the second supplementary budget for fiscal 2019-20.

Shortly after, Speaker Vijay Kumar Chaudhary adjourned the House till 11 am on Monday.

Modi, who is also the deputy chief minister, tabled the second supplementary budget of Rs 12,457.61 crore for 2019-20, of which Rs 5962.11 crore has been earmarked for annual schemes and Rs 6480.42 crore for the establishment and committed expenditure.

Prominent among those present on the first day of the winter session was Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Leader of Opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, his brother and RJD MLA Tej Pratap Yadav and Congress leader Sadanand Singh.

Kumar joined other members in condoling the death of former MLAs -- Dr Jagannath Mishra, Naiyar Azam, Raghupati Gope, Tulsi Das Mehta -- and ex-Union minister Ram Jethmalani, who was also a Rajya Sabha member from Bihar.

Earlier in the day, opposition RJD, Congress and CPI-ML legislators staged a protest outside the House, seeking an apology from the deputy CM for his tweet on Jawarharlal Nehru University (JNU) protest over fee hike.

"Sushil Modi, who was once a student leader, has defamed JNU and its students. He should tender an apology," RJD leader Lalit Yadav told reporters outside the House.

The senior BJP leader had said on Tuesday that fee hike in JNU was not a big enough issue for students to take out a protest march to Parliament.

He also claimed that "urban naxals" were misleading students for their own political gains.