The Milli Majlis Committee of Regional Affairs held its first autumn-session meeting on 20 September. They had a minute of silence in tribute to our heroes who had died the shahids’ deaths apprehending a borderline provocation by Armenia. The committee chairman Siyavush Novruzov remarked that the courage our soldiers had shown in the battles for the Motherland set an example for every citizen of Azerbaijan to follow.

Mr Novruzov then announced that the agenda consisted of four items and began with an account of the work done by the committee during the 2022 spring and extraordinary sessions. He mentioned the four committee meetings at which they had considered the draft law on partial changes in the administrative territorial division of Ganja and a bill of amendment concerning the List of the Municipalities of the Republic of Azerbaijan (appended to the Municipalities’ Territories and Lands Law). All the drafts had been processed in the three readings; the Milli Majlis had passed them all in the end. Besides, a hearing on the Garabagh and East Zangazur Economic Zones as a new destination for regional, socio-economic and agrarian growth had been held in Shusha in conjunction with the Agrarian Policy Committee of the Milli Majlis.

Also in the reported period, the Regional Affairs Committee had been fruitfully active in the context of co-operation with the appropriate state agencies and international entities. The ‘History-Writing Signature’ videoconference on the 99^th jubilee of the National Leader Heydar Aliyev was conducted with the organisational input of the parliamentary committee.

The committee members spent the 2022 spring and extraordinary sessions meeting citizens and hearing out their appeals periodically. The Regional Affairs Committee received the total of 2,102 applications in that period, of which it processed 1,704 independently whereas the rest were forwarded to appropriate departments and offices for resolution. Furthermore, the MPs were meeting with representatives of the vulnerable social categories – the shahid families, gazies, war veterans and low-income household members. And even that was not all, because the committee members held surgeries, reported to the electors on their work and covered many relevant issues of the time in the social and mass media alike.

The overview of the work done was followed up by the plan of the work to be done during the 2022 autumn session. It was said that the committee would be considering drafts arriving by way of the legislative initiatives as well as amendments to several effective laws. There will be public hearings, too; also, the committee will analyse and generalise feedback from concerned state authorities and citizens.

Next, Siyavush Novruzov told the meeting participants about the Bills on the agenda.

The first one was a set of draft amendments to the List of the Municipalities of the Azerbaijan Republic appended to the Law ‘On the Territories and Lands of the Municipalities’.  The former Kapaz and Nizami districts of Ganja had been dissolved and their respective areas incorporated into the urban territory pursuant to the law No 492-VIQ dated 4 March, the committee chairman said. The former administrative districts 1 and 2 of the terminated Nizami District of the city had become the administrative districts of Ganja Nos 1 and 2 whereas the former administrative districts 1 and 2 of the dissolved Kapaz District had become the administrative districts of Ganja Nos 3 and 4, respectively. The above-said List (of the municipalities) is to be adjusted accordingly.

Next, the committee members looked at the first-reading Bill containing amendments to the Tax Code and to the laws ‘On the Social Insurance’, ‘On the Municipality Financing Basics’, ‘On the Medical Insurance’ and ‘On Encumbrance of Movable Property’.

It was said that the Bill had been prepared in concordance with the law No 406-VIQD dated 3 December 2021 that had introduced corrections in the Tax Code, which is why it had been proposed that the already-mentioned Law ‘On the Municipality Financing Basics’ should be amended, too. The changes only apply to levying the property tax on buildings and aquatic and airborne transport vehicles in possession of physical persons (in the context of the municipal taxes) as well as it does to levying the mineral extraction law on vicinal construction materials (in the format of the state taxes).

The deputy chairman of the committee Elshan Musayev and the committee members Mazahir Efendiyev, Aghil Mammadov, Kamran Bayramov, Javid Osmanov, Sabina Khasayeva and Emin Hajiyev commented on the agenda items, municipal operations and making them more efficient together with the taxation optimisation aiming to promote such efficiency. Besides, the MPs touched on the border provocations of Armenia and other issues du jour.

In the end, the Regional Affairs Committee approved both the past-period performance report and current-period work plan, and recommended that the two Bills considered during the meeting should be tabled at a plenum of the Milli Majlis.

The Press and Public Relations Department

The Milli Majlis