BENGALURU: The Legislative Council has created history by reconvening for the first time after being adjourned sine die. After Council Chairman Prathap Chandra Shetty adjourned the House on Thursday, ruling party members appealed to Governor Vajubhai Vala and convinced him to hold the session again on Tuesday.
Explaining how he managed to pull off the near-impossible feat, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister JC Madhu Swamy told The New Indian Express, “I wrote to the Governor on Friday, asking him to reconvene the House under Rule 170. The Council had been adjourned the previous day and considering that members may not be able to come back so soon, we asked the Governor to continue the session.
The decision to prorogue the House was not that of the government, and it was not what we agreed upon at the Business Advisory Committee meeting.” He said, “During the meeting, the Council Chairman and others protested, saying that if the Assembly is adjourned on Thursday and MLAs are going home for gram panchayat elections, Council members too want to go.
But since the BJP is in a majority in the Business Advisory Committee, we said we will go by the majority decision. The Chairman said he will take a decision, but the government told him he cannot decide unilaterally as the government is vested with the responsibility of summoning and proroguing the session.” As per rules, the Chairman is bound to explain to the Council what transpired at the Business Advisory Committee meeting. Had he explained his position in the Council, the House could have decided on the matter as per law. But he did not say a word in the Council.
We waited till 7pm Thursday as he had to also announce the decision on a ‘no-confidence’ motion moved by our members against him. But he adjourned the House sine die, the minister said. This left the government red-faced as it could not table the anti-cow slaughter bill in the Upper House. The minister said, “This time, we had decided on the duration of the session based on the number of bills that needed to be passed.
We were in a bind last time as several bills were held up, and there was some confusion that the government was tabling bills in the Council, passing an ordinance on those that were not passed and tabling them again.” He said, “There is a delay in the Council as debates on bills drag on for hours. For example, the appropriation bill that was passed in the Assembly in about 30 minutes, took from morning till lunchtime. The University Bill was debated for three hours. I had clearly told them that the session should be extended to clear the pending bills.”
The standoff in the Council is mainly because of the decision of the ruling party, which is in majority in the House for the first time, to move a no-confidence motion against the Chairman. Prathap Chandra Shetty had claimed that the motion was not in order and that he had got the legal opinion of three legal experts, who had apparently interpreted the law saying there is no charge against the chairman and such a motion cannot be tabled in the House. But the government is going ahead with the no-confidence motion against the Chairman when the House reconvenes on Tuesday.