Gujarat Congress MLAs’ suspension reduced as Opposition drops no-confidence against speaker

With today’s motion, the three Opposition MLAs will now be suspended till the current session, which ends on Wednesday.

The decision to reduce the suspension came a day after the Gujarat High Court admitted a petition filed by Der and Thakor who had challenged the Assembly’s decision to suspend them for three years.

On Tuesday, after the Question Hour concluded in the Assembly, Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel moved a proposal to reduce the suspension term of the three Congress MLAs, ranging from one year to three years, till the end of the current budget session. His proposal was unanimously passed by a voice vote.

BJP MLA Jagdish Panchal, who had allegedly hurled verbal abuses at Dudhat and Der on March 14, also tendered an apology in the House for his behaviour. Panchal, however, maintained that he never used any abusive or unparliamentary words during the ruckus. To this, Congress leader Shailesh Parmar assured the House that Der, Dudhat and Thakor would also tender their apologies during the monsoon session of the Assembly.

After this, the Congress moved a proposal to withdraw the no-confidence motion against the Speaker, saying that “these motions have been proposed 18 times since 1960 but not once have come up for discussion”.

Welcoming the Congress’s decision to withdraw the no-confidence motion, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pradeepsinh Jadeja said, “(Leader of the Opposition) Paresh Dhanani has convinced his members to withdraw the (no-confidence) proposal…is good and I appreciate it. Members like (BJP chief whip) Pankaj Desai have done good work for the withdrawal of proposal for no confidence”. Desai, who is a BJP MLA from Nadiad, was formerly in the Congress.

The no-confidence motion, admitted by the 182-member House on March 22, was supposed to come up for discussion and voting on or before March 28, the last day of the session. Congress leader Shailesh Parmar had filed the no-trust motion application on February 28 with the Assembly secretariat, stating that Trivedi was “acting in a biased manner in favour of the ruling BJP”. Given the numerical strength of the BJP (99) and the Congress (77) in the 182-member House, the no-confidence motion against the Speaker would have been defeated if it were put to vote.

Commenting on the Congress party’s allegation that he had acted in a biased manner, Trivedi maintained that the reality was totally different. “I have always acted in a neutral way. I have the data to prove that I have given more opportunities to the Opposition MLAs than the ruling party members to put forward their questions,” Trivedi said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, in the Gujarat High Court, Advocate General Kamal Trivedi apprised the Division Bench of Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy about the decision in the Assembly regarding reducing the suspension of the three MLAs. Lawyer Babu Mangukiya, who represented the two petitioners, told the High Court that since the MLAs’ suspension has been reduced to March 28, the petitions become infructuous.

“Now that the matter has been resolved and the suspension is only for the current session, there is no point to run the matter in court. And the court will not like to waste time over an academic issue,” said Mangukiya. The High Court then disposed of the petitions.

With PTI INPUTS