Speaker Meira Kumar said in her valedictory address that the Lok Sabha lost over 23 hours and 34 minutes due to interruptions and forced adjournments, but it sat late for 30 hours and 52 minutes to transact important financial and other business.

Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has named a 3-member Indo-Canadian Committee for the Community Historical Recognition Program to look at the projects from the community for sensitizing and informing the Canadians about the tragic 1914 Komagata Maru tragedy.

Just two more working days, August 6 and 7, and the Budget session of the Parliament comes to a close.

Just for the record, the largest infrastructure project is the dedicated freight corridor project, where the last cost estimate is a whopping Rs 70,000 crore (Rs 700 billion). It is all set to breach its original completion date of 2017.

The high deficit was bad enough, Parliament's standing committees won't be scrutinising budget proposals either.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Thursday demanded that the Centre book UP Congress Committee president Ritu Bahuguna Joshi, for her alleged inflammatory comments against the Bahujan Samaj Party chief, under the Prevention of Atrocities Act against Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes.Mayawati condemned the language used by the Congress' state unit chief and said that BSP workers were so upset that they wanted to take to the streets.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee presented the Budget for 2009-10 on July 6. Following is the Budget Speech of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee:

In a thanksgiving budget, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday proposed no increase in passenger fares or freight tariff while announcing a slew of measures including launch of 12 non-stop point-to-point long-distance trains and air-conditioned double-decker coaches for inter-city travel.

Despite government declaring it as a "top priority," the Women's Reservation Bill is unlikely to come up in the Budget session of Parliament beginning on Thursday.

Salman Khurshid, who holds the portfolios of minority affairs and corporate affairs, tells Sreelatha Menon that he wants greater public participation in development programmes.

During the last few years, finance ministers like P Chidambaram and Jaswant Singh limited their pre-Budget discussions to representatives from the industrialists' lobby, economists, farmers and trade unions. This time, Pranab Mukherjee has held exclusive meetings with exporters, the financial sector, electronics and information technology. He will also hold a meeting with the finance ministers of the states.

The much-delayed Women's Reservation Bill may not come up in the Budget session of Parliament as it has to be scrutinised by a new Parliamentary panel. A Union minister, who declined to be identified, said work needed to be done on the Bill which was before the Standing Committee on Law and Justice.

Due to paucity of time, the UPA government will drop the traditional scrutiny of the Budget by the Parliamentary standing committees. Instead, Pranab Mukherjee is in touch with BJP and the CPM, while Pawan Kumar Bansal and Anand Sharma have been asked to liaise with the smaller parties to ensure the Budget moves smoothly through Parliament.

Of late the misappropriation of terms such as innovation and reform in the context of finance or taxation has become commonplace.

If Obama makes it difficult for U.S. companies to send jobs overseas or hire using H-1B visas, India's huge IT sector could suffer

The scheme is expected to activate the measures announced for the housing construction sector under the economic stimulus packages. It will increase the stock of houses ranging from 300 sq ft to 1,200 sq ft plinth area built at affordable rates on land provided by state governments.

Bharatiya Janata Party's firebrand leader Sushma Swaraj will contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections from Bhopal or Vidisha constituency in Madhya Pradesh.The final decision about her nomination will be taken by the Central Election Committee on February 26, she told rediff.com.

Mumbai, the largest metropolitan city of India, may well be on the path taken by cities like Amsterdam and Netherlands, if it gets inspired to implement sustainability development.

It seems to be the correct course for an economy which is officially slated to contract by over 2 per cent this year (though some economists are predicting a much harsher contraction of 10 per cent) with a budget deficit of 8 per cent.

Pranab Mukherjee's speech was so boring that half of the Treasury benches were found napping. Newsmen peeped from the Press Gallery to see the mood of the MPs.

Presenting the interim Budget for 2009-10 in Lok Sabha, acting Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee claimed in Parliament on Monday that every effort has been made to fulfil promises made to the common man.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is also managing the finance ministry, presented the Interim Budget for 2009-10 in Parliament on Monday. Following is the text of the entire Budget Speech:

Railway Minister Lalu Prasad was at his humourous best while presenting the Interim Railway Budget in the Lok Sabha on Friday, with a fair sprinkling of quotable quotes, couplets and witty replies to interventions.

Leon Panetta, who has no direct intelligence gathering or analysis experience, is set to become chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, with a powerful US Senate Committee voting unanimously on his nomination by President Barack Obama.

Following is the trascript of President Pratibha Patil's address to the joint sittingof Parliament on Thursday.

'Karat's CPI-M is no longer the (reasonably) disciplined, cadre-based party he inherited from Surjeet, it is now just another group of egotistic individuals.'

United States President Barack Obama has appointed yet another top Indian American legal mind to a senior position in his administration. Rashad Hussain, 30, who recently served as a trial attorney at the US Department of Justice, was named by Obama as Deputy Associate Counsel to the President.Before his stint with the DOJ, Hussain was working as a law clerk to Damon K Keith on the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Detroit, Michigan.

The newly appointed Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee took charge of his new office in north block, returning to it after a gap of 24 years. The Finance Ministry office, which has been sealed off to outsiders and particularly prying journalists with the vote-on-account preparations in full swing, was on Thursday opened up at 4 p.m. when the media was invited in to cover the taking over ceremony.

On Monday, Barack Obama appointed Bansal as General Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor at the Office of Management and Budget, which one Obama transition team source told rediff.com would "be the heart of the new administration's agenda for change."

Ravi said that a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs had been fixed with the agenda of proroguing them, to have a fresh session in February with the Presidential address on the first day.

Home Minister P Chidambaram let out the secret in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday while moving the twin anti-terror legislations for consideration and passage. "Any important and necessary changes felt necessary in these laws can be made when we meet in February again," he said while urging passage of the Bills despite reservations that members may have to demonstrate that all are united in the war against terrorism.

'Sweetheart' and 'darling' have been Sheila Dikshit's favourite words for decades -- they go well with her trademark warm, grandmotherly smile. And now, the capital has reciprocated. Dikshit has become the 'darling of Delhi'.On December 8, she became the only chief minister of Delhi to enter into a third successive term. In the 123-year history of the Congress, she is the third chief minister to have this record.

Suspended Congress leader Narayan Rane on Saturday claimed that he holds the key to the survival of the soon-to-be-formed Ashok Chavan led Congress-Nationalist Congress Party government in Maharashtra.Rane refused to divulge his future course of action when the winter session of the legislature would be convened in Nagpur this month.He said he could provide a letter of 30 MLAs to the Governor, saying that they were not supporting the new government.

India-born author Salman Rushdie and Indian Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta will collaborate to produce a movie based on his prize winning novel Midnight's Children.

Sounds like Obama might need to reconvene his all-star economic brain trust sooner than expected.

Even though this year's Nobels have come in for some criticism, in one field at least, the committee seems to have got it absolutely right.

With the Bush administration pushing hard for a quick Congressional nod for the landmark India-United States civil nuclear agreement, a small group of senior Democratic lawmakers have demanded the detailed examination of the pact.The three-person group led by Massachussetts Congressman Edward Markey has said that there are many lingering questions about the deal that require further examination and hence the Congress should rule out any rush for an expedited vote.

"Who listens to us? Nobody. Biharis keep dying due to floods, but nation doesn't take notice of them. I know so many families in north Bihar who have lost their homes 14 times due to floods after Independence. Then, so what? Does anybody care for them? Do you know last year 960 people died due to floods in North Bihar? Nobody reads news from Bihar. That was Dinesh Kumar Mishra.

'The cynic in me wonders whether the Speaker's defiance wasn't assisted by the knowledge that he cannot possibly be re-elected from Bolpur.'

It was one of the most tantalising days in Indian Parliament. Parties debated for and against the nuclear deal. MPs crossed swords, armed with allegations and statistics. As the nation kept glued to the happenings, rediff.com's Prem Panicker gave its readers a blow-by-blow account of what happened. Here is the transcript: