AAP MLA Jarnail Singh had introduced the resolution seeking withdrawal of former PM Rajiv Gandhi’s Bharat Ratna award. (Express Archive)Three days after passing a resolution demanding that former PM Rajiv Gandhi’s Bharat Ratna be withdrawn, the Delhi Assembly Monday issued the bulletin of the proceedings, omitting the contentious paragraph.
On the last day of a two-day special session on December 21, the House passed a resolution on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots which included a line on Rajiv, plunging the AAP into crisis. The party maintained that the “original” resolution had no mention of Rajiv and that MLA Somnath Bharti had slipped in a line before passing a handwritten note to Jarnail Singh, who introduced the resolution.
The Indian Express has learnt that Speaker Ram Niwas Goel invoked Rule 291 and Rule 293 of the Legislative Assembly of National Capital Territory of Delhi Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business to omit the paragraph that mentioned Rajiv. Sources said that under normal circumstances, the bulletin would have been issued on December 21, when the resolution was passed.
According to sources in AAP and Congress, the two parties are in talks to reach an understanding ahead of the 2019 polls, and the resolution had left the Arvind Kejriwal-led party red-faced.
According to Goel, he did not have to invoke any rules as “there was no confusion and no need to bring about any change in the bulletin”. “The bulletin was not issued that day as it was quite late by the time the proceedings ended. The Assembly Secretariat prepared the bulletin, which I merely signed on Monday morning. I had gone to the assembly to attend the 158th birth anniversary celebrations of Madan Mohan Malaviya,” he said.
Official sources, however, said the Speaker invoked the rules to issue directions that only the written text, circulated among all members, will go into the official proceedings.
Rule 291 states, “If any doubt arises as to the interpretation of any of the provisions of these rules, decision of the Speaker shall be final.” And according to Rule 293, “No decision of the Speaker in respect of allowing or disallowing of any resolution or question or in respect of any other matter shall be questioned.”
“It is true that the Speaker usually does not vet the bulletin before its release, but in this case, he was kept in the loop due to the controversy. The entire resolution had gone into the Assembly records otherwise. But that is not the case anymore,” sources said.
