The Centre on Thursday announced that the Winter session of Parliament will be held from November 16 to December 16. The decision to advance the session has been taken to meet the April 1 deadline for the Goods and Services Tax.

The Winter session of Parliament is usually held in the third or fourth week of November. An early Winter session will help get the Central GST and Integrated GST legislations passed and give the Finance Ministry enough time to to implement the single tax regime. The new regime will subsume excise, service tax and other local levies.

In August, government officials had indicated that the Winter session may be convened immediately after the festival season is over. “Presentation of Budget around end-January is under consideration and hence an early Winter Session also paves way for an early Budget Session,” a government official had told PTI.