Tag: deputy chief minister

Punish MPs

India
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MPs have not allowed Parliament to function since 9/11/2010. A. Raja, telecom minister, resigned during the session. Opposition MPs wanted JPC. Congress MPs opposed JPC. Everyday there were disruptions and adjournments.

Parliament is a forum for debate and discussion with dignity and decorum. Disruption is unjustified.

MPs must be punished for non-functioning of Parliament. MPs of both sides are guilty. Opposition MPs disrupted. Ruling MPs allowed disruptions. Disrupting MPs should have been suspended for the rest of the session. If they refused to leave the house they should have been physically lifted and thrown out. If any opposition MP says disruption is a legitimate option he should be told suspension and throwing out is a more legitimate option.

MPs must lose their salaries and allowances for the period the Parliament did not function including Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. They must pay for water, electricity and other things they used for the period. They must refund money spent on air or other travel.

During the monsoon session MPs voted for increase and multiplication of their salaries and allowances. Their salary more than doubled. Daily allowance was doubled from Rs.1,000/- to Rs.2,000/-. Constituency allowance and other allowances and perquisites went up.

In 1995 winter session did not function because BJP and other MPs wanted the then telecom minister Sukh Ram to resign because of a scam. In 1996 BJP formed a government in Himachal Pradesh with Sukh Ram as deputy chief minister.

Karnataka vote of confidence

India
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On 11/10/2010 Karnataka Legislative Assembly witnessed some unusual scenes and BJP government survived. Congress and JD(S) screamed murder of democracy.

The Speaker had disqualified 11 BJP and 5 independent MLAs before the vote. He did what a Congress Speaker had done in Maharashtra some years back when Shiv Sena had support of some Congress MLAs. That time the Speaker had disqualified the Congress MLAs who were to vote with Shiv Sena. Now for Congress to claim BJP acted unconstitutionally does not make sense. Congress must remember the role its Speakers like Shivraj Patil, Madhukarrao Chowdhury, Pratapsingh Rane have played. What is sauce for goose is sauce for gander. However the Speaker disqualifying 5 independent MLAs is not justified though V. S. Acharya said that Supreme Court in its judgment in 2005 said independent MLAs could be disqualified.

Speaking of constitution, there is no provision for vote of confidence in constitution. There is provision for vote of no confidence. The Speaker is a constitutional authority and the Governor has no authority to tell him not to disqualify members. The disqualified MLAs have gone to High Court. The constitution had barred court jurisdiction in disqualification matters and Supreme Court had struck down that section.

Hans Raj Bharadwaj, Governor of Karnataka, has acted as a Congressman. He was Law Minister. Veerappa Moily, Law Minister of India, has history of trying to dislodge non-Congress governments and other Congress Chief Ministers. He had tried to bring down the government headed by Ramakrishna Hegde. He had offered two lakh rupees to Byre Gowda. The tape of the conversation was public. S. K. Desai, the judge who headed the Inquiry Commission on the tape and said the voice of not Moily’s, was later caught in a corruption scam. When Veerappa Moily was Chief Minister, S. M. Krisha was Deputy Chief Minister and one Congress meeting ended in vandalism and there was a cartoon that said if Krishna had wished Mahabharata could have been avoided.

BJP government in Karnataka is riven with disunity. Once Reddy Brothers created problems. Now others have created problems. Congress should not have joined with JD(S) to bring down BJP government. It should remember what Kumaraswamy did to them. BJP in Karnataka is destroying itself, it does not need enemies.