Parliamentary Affairs Minister Saryu Roy has put his own Government in the dock over their decision to shorten Assembly Winter session commencing from December 12. Unhappy that the session will have only four working days including the opening ‘condolence’ day, the Minister said that his call in this regard was disregarded at the top level.
When contacted on the clamour by the Opposition parties, the senior Cabinet Minister said that he tried his best to lengthen the duration of the session. “What would the Opposition say? Even I also feel that the Assembly session should have been longer. I tried my best from my side. The matter comes before the Cabinet and it will not be proper for me comment on its collective decision but I had demanded for longer session,” said Roy on Wednesday.
He went on adding that final authority to decide such things lies with the Chief Minister and there were several things “between the lines”. “The Government should see precedence in neighbouring Bihar, West Bengal and UP. I have been advocating that the House should at least meet for 40-50 days in a year,” said he.
However, he was quick to show the disruptive attitude of the Opposition but suggested the parties to sit with the Government and demand for sufficiently longer sessions. Nonetheless it is a curtailed session the parties are leaving no stone unturned for making most out of it.
Opposition collectively in the form of JMM, Congress and JVM has decided once again to go after the Government with identical but sentimental issues of land acquisition, religious freedom, deaths causing because of hunger and diseases and of the alleged political vendetta from the Government.
“First of all we oppose the move of the Government for calling such a short session when the State is reeling under distresses related to farmers, tribal. Government is in a dock for not providing medical and nutritional aid to poor. It is clear with their decision that the Government does not want to face potent questions related to people and is only concerned about meeting its financial requirements through passing supplementary demands for grants. We will strongly condemn it and do our best to embarrass the Government inside the House,” said JVM principal general secretary and legislator Pradeep Yadav.
The Opposition is also baffled since it would be perhaps the first session in which not a single ‘Chief Minister Question Hour’ is scheduled to take place. “The Government is constantly degrading the relevance of the Assembly. How is it possible to bring issues related to public from across the State by 81 members in just three days? That means most of the questions are going to remain unanswered like before and people and its representatives are going to be duped,” said former Congress State president and Lohardaga MLA Sukhdeo Bhagat.
Parties in the Opposition want to raise series of malnutrition deaths reportedly taken place in different parts of the State along with of those who died for want of medicines and doctors in rural areas. Besides, land acquisitions made for mining and other industrial activities, non-payment of compensation to land losers, killing of protestors in several police firings are the other burning topics in the hands of the leaders.
Moreover the ruling bloc altogether is in no mood to provide much space to the complaints. “You have seen fate of the previous so many sessions when they (Opposition) went on a rampage to disrupt proceedings after proceedings.
The Opposition is not at all interested in healthy discussions in parliamentary manner and if they are serious then even four days are enough,” said BJP chief whip Radha Krishna Kishore who also added that a meeting of all ruling party MLAs have been called at the residence of Chief Minister Raghubar Das on December 13.