20-odd BJP MLAs resent over ‘not being given’ time to speak in House

In a hint of intra-party differences, around 20 BJP MLAs have written to the party’s state president expressing their dissatisfaction over allegedly not being given time by their legislature party leaders to raise public issues in the Rajasthan assembly.

In the 200-strong state assembly, the opposition BJP has 71 MLAs with the right to allocate time to them to speak in the assembly reserved with Leader of Opposition Gulab Chand Kataria and Deputy Leader of Opposition Rajendra Rathore.

In their letter to BJP’s Rajasthan unit president Satish Poonia, the legislators’ group led by senior BJP MLA Kailash Meghwal has also asked him to instruct Kataria and Rathore to allocate equal time to all party MLAs without any bias to raise public issues in the assembly.

The letter to Poonia was written over a fortnight ago but the entire matter came to light on Sunday ahead of a meeting of party leaders of various states with the Central leadership.

''There are several senior legislators who should be taken into confidence and be allowed to speak on special issues. But it is not so,” Meghwal told PTI. He said it is the right of the leader of the opposition or chief whip to decide who should speak on an issue in the House, but the BJP legislature party has not appointed its chief whip till date. ''So, senior party MLAs are disappointed with whatever is happening and a letter has been written to the state party president over the issue,” he said. The legislators have said in their letter that they are not being given any chance to speak despite moving an adjournment motion in the House on various issues.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)