This year's session will take ten and half days, two days longer than the previous one.

Besides the reason of reviewing the Legislation Law bill, extra time is given to lawmakers to discuss the budget report, Fu said.

There will be a number of high-profile press conferences on the sidelines of the session including the one given by Premier Li Keqiang at the end of the session and others by ministers.

Some of panel discussions of NPC delegations will open to reporters. The measure was first adopted in 1995 and last year the press were present at about 30 panel meetings.

A preparatory meeting was held Wednesday morning to elect the session's presidium and secretary general and adopt the agenda, presided over by Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, after a meeting of chairman and vice chairpersons. The presidium held the first meeting after the preparatory meeting.

The national legislature will effectively fulfill its legal duty and respond to the central leadership's strategy of comprehensively building a moderately prosperous society, deepening reform, implementing the rule of law and strengthening Party discipline, Zhang said.

The presidium is composed of senior officials of the Communist Party of China (CPC), non-Communist parties, the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, personages without party affiliation, deputies from government agencies and people's organizations, and leading members of all the 35 delegations to the NPC session, including those from Hong Kong and Macao and the People's Liberation Army.

As of Tuesday, 2,926 of 2,964 NPC deputies have registered at the session's secretariat.