NEW DELHI: Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla accepted the resignations of nine BJP Lok Sabha MPs, including that of Union ministers Narendra Singh Tomar and Prahlad Singh Patel, on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the three Union ministers — Prahlad Singh Patel (MoS for food processing industries and Jal Shakti), Narendra Singh Tomar (agriculture minister) and Renuka Singh (MoS for tribal affairs) — also quit from their respective ministries on Thursday, which were accepted by President Droupadi Murmu.
With this, Union tribal affairs minister Arjun Munda has been given additional charges of agriculture ministry and farmers’ welfare. MoS Shobha Karandlaje is now MoS in charge of food processing industries. Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has been given additional charge as MoS for Jal Shakti and Union minister Bharti Pravin Pawar, MoS for tribal affairs.
In a strategic move to better the party’s electoral prospects, the BJP had fielded its parliamentarians in the recent assembly elections held in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana. The party had nominated 21 MPs to contest the state elections and 12 of them had managed to secure a win.
Twelve BJP MPs elected in these state assemblies had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday and tendered their resignations from Parliament, in the presence of the party’s national president JP Nadda.
Besides Tomar and Patel, the other MPs who had resigned are Rakesh Singh, Uday Pratap Singh and Riti Pathak from Madhya Pradesh; Diya Kumari, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Kirodi Lal Meena (Rajya Sabha MP) and Mahant Balaknath from Rajasthan, and Renuka Singh, Gomati Sai and Arun Sao from Chhattisgarh.
Party strategy
In a strategic move to better the BJP’s electoral prospects in the four states, it had fielded 21 of its parliamen-tarians, including Union ministers, in the recent assembly elections.
LS nod for tribal varsity in Telangana
Lok Sabha on Thursday passed a bill to establish the Sammakka Sarakka Central Tribal University in Telangana. The bill was passed by a voice vote with the House rejecting some amendments moved by Opposition. Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan said if any student’s life is lost in any campus “we as a society should be responsible for it”.
‘hike stipend of non-net fellows’
Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday urged the Centre to consider hiking significantly the stipend of non-NET research fellows, asserting that their contributions are pivotal in advancing the country’s growth. During the ‘zero hour’, the MP highlighted the plight of non-NET research fellows in terms of insufficient resources.
live-in relations ‘dangerous’: BJP MP
A BJP MP from Haryana on Thursday termed live-in relationships a “dangerous disease” that needs to be eradicated from society and urged the government to make a law against it. Raising the issue in the Lok Sabha during the ‘zero hour’, Dharambir Singh also said that divorce rates in love marriages were high and the consent of the parents of the bride and groom should therefore be made mandatory for such alliances.