Bihar Assembly farewell session likely to be stormy

Leader of the Opposition Sushil Kumar Modi has objected to clubbing financial business together with the farewell to the 81 MLAs accusing the government of plotting to do away with the winter session.

While the legislature will condole the demise of its members during the inter-session period and pass the supplementary demands for the current year, besides table the report of the Public Accounts Committee on the first two days, the last day is reserved for bidding farewell to the MLAs. Modi, in a letter to the Bihar Assembly Speaker Sadanandngh, has said, “the legislators are being denied their right to raise issues of public concern in the house.”

Ever since the conclusion of the last session, the state has witnessed a series of extremist killings, including that of Lohardagga Superintendent of Police Ajay Kumar Singh and two massacres in Siwan district which claimed 16 lives last month.

The Opposition is likely to grill the government on its alleged failure on the law and order front, besides its inability to end the prolonged strikes by Bihar Administrative Service Association (BASA) and colleges and university teachers.

The government is also likely to come under fire for its failure to secure a special economic package from the centre for residual Bihar to cope with the loss of the mineral rich Jharkhand region.

Modi said the BJP and its allies would also attack the government on the issue of doing away with the question hour during the special session. “Question Hour is the most important instrument available to the MLAs to raise issues of public interest….Such utter disregard for norms of conduct of legislative business is unacceptable to us”, he said.