LoP also slams the Assembly secretariat for repetitive and false replies
Demands change in rules for sub-questions and allow to seek replies on issues more than 5 years
Goemkarponn desk
Panaji: With Prime Minister Narendra Modi set to visit Goa on February 6, in the midst of the Goa Assembly’s Budget session (starting Feb 2), there are speculations on the curtailment of the Assembly and Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant has said the Business Advisory Committee will decide on the matter.
Reacting to the Chief Minister’s statement that the Business Advisory Committee will decide the duration of the Sixth Session of the Eighth Goa Legislative Assembly, the Leader of Opposition Yuri Alemao made a categorical statement that the BAC does not decide on the overall duration (Working Days of the Session) of any session and it is the Government which decides on the number of days of a particular session.
In his letter, Alemao has further stated: “I would like to place on record that the Role of Business Advisory Committee under Rule 196 of the Rules of Procedure & Conduct of Business of the Goa Legislative Assembly is restricted to recommending the time duration and indicate time-table for taking up various Business during the Assembly Session”.
Further, he said, despite raising the issue of faulty uploading of replies to the LAQs in the last BAC Meeting, the Replies to many LAQs of various Departments were found to be wrongly uploaded with a lot of repetitive pages and faulty annexures.
It is observed that the Annexures uploaded with the Replies are not readable and sometimes irrelevant.
“This is either due to the complete ignorance of the Officials or their incompetency in understanding the Question. I urge that proper Replies only of desired information based on facts & and figures should be made available to the members of the Legislative Assembly. Strict Action should be taken against the Officials for their negligence and inaction,” Yuri Alemao demanded in his Letter.
Alemao also reiterated his demand to remove the restrictions to ask only 5 sub-questions in one LAQ and has urged to increase it to at least 7 to 10 Sub-questions. He has also urged that the restriction of 5 years to seek past history of any subject matter should be removed to enable the MLAs to get wide information.
“Reasonable time should be given to the members of the Legislative Assembly to study the Bills brought in by the Government. The introduction, consideration and passing of the Bills should be done with proper discussion in the house,” stated Yuri Alemao in his Letter.
He has also raised Objections to the change in the Convention of taking common lots for Listing of LAQs of Opposition and Ruling and has demanded that the previous Convention of Alternate Lots should be continued. Suspension of Rules should not be done to facilitate the Government to push for Business without giving adequate time for the MLAs to study the subject matter and deliberate on the same, Yuri Alemao has mentioned in his Letter.