17th Odisha Legislative Assembly Session on July 22

 Bhubaneswar: The first session of the 17th Odisha Legislative Assembly will commence from July 22. A detailed schedule of the session has been released.

As per the official notification, the session will begin with Odisha governor Raghubar Das’ addressing it. This will be followed by a motion of thanks on the governor's address.

As per the schedule, the Odisha budget for 2024-25 will be presented on July 25.

The 17th Odisha Legislative Assembly marks a change of power. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was the major opposition in the assembly, came to power after a wait of 15 years, ending the 25 years rule of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) headed by Naveen Patnaik.

The BJP got 78 seats, four more the majority mark, while the BJD finished second with 51 seats.

Since the BJD, the ally of BJP from 1998 to 2009, — has got a good number of seats, it might try to attempt to put the treasury bench members in trouble. However, chief minister Mohan Charan Majhi is confident that the first session will be a memorable one with a presentation of a “good budget reflecting hopes” for all sections of the people.

The CM on Friday said the budget will have allocation of funds for the new schemes to be rolled out by his government as per the promises made by the BJP during the poll campaign.

It remains to be seen if the budget makes allocation of funds for the BJP’s much touted Subhadra Yojana. Under this scheme, a woman member of a family will be provided a cash voucher of Rs 50,000 which she will spend in a period of two years. Besides, people will be watching if the government is making extra allocation for the pension schemes meant for old-age people, widows and differently-abled persons. In fact, the BJP has announced to enhance the social security pension for the above category people to Rs 3,000 from the existing maximum amount of Rs 1,000.