Opposition alleges discrimination in asking questions in Assembly

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Leader of Opposition VD Satheesan on Thursday complained to Speaker M B Rajesh that the questions raised against Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in the assembly were being changed in favour of the ruling bench.

According to him, starred questions (that require an oral answer in the assembly) from the Opposition were changed to unstarred ones (that does not require an oral answer, but written statements to be tabled) to help the CM from answering them on the floor.

“However, the questions raised by the ruling party’s MLAs are allowed as starred questions,” he said. This, according to him, is a violation of the ruling by the Speaker when the Opposition raised the issue 10 days ago.

The starred questions that angered Satheesan were raised by Vattiyoorkavu MLA V K Prasanth on Thursday. The  MLA wanted an update on the cases related to the “political conspiracy behind the murder attempts on the CM and LDF convener E P Jayarajan on flight”.

It included the action taken against the Youth Congress leaders who led the protest against the CM. The CM responded by naming the Congress leaders listed as accused and the cases against them in various police stations.

Since it was a starred question, Prasanth also asked a supplementary question, ‘if Congress President K Sudhakaran was behind the attacks’. During this time, the Opposition maintained silence as Satheesan had already informed that UDF MLAs would boycott the supplementary questions.