BENGALURU: With the monsoon session beginning from Monday, the ruling Congress and opposition BJP and JDS are gearing up for a head-to-head confrontation in the Assembly and Council.
With many issues, including the recent MUDA site scam -- allegedly involving Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his family, going to come to the fore, the nine-day session is expected to be chaotic.
A coordination committee meeting of BJP and JDS, held in Bengaluru recently, was attended by Union ministers HD Kumaraswamy and Pralhad Joshi, Leader of Opposition R Ashoka and others. The two alliance partners, for whom this is the first session working as a united opposition block, decided that the government should be cornered in both Houses.
Apart from the MUDA scam, they are expected to raise issues like irregularities in the Maharshi Valmiki ST corporation that led to the resignation of minister B Nagendra, the law and order situation in the state, increase in prices of certain commodities and more.
‘No junior officials’
Siddaramaiah, who met senior officials on Sunday, told them to attend the session personally and to help ministers provide effective answers to opposition queries. He told them not to depute junior level officials to the session.
The additional chief secretary, principal secretary and secretaries of all the departments attended the meeting at the chief minister’s official residence.
Siddaramaiah told them that it is not a budget session as the budget was passed in the previous session. This would mean that opposition members would raise many issues, and officials should be ready with relevant data to counter these allegations. He also got a list of probable issues that the opposition could raise.
On Sunday, he warned officials against taking leaves during the session.
Chief Secretary, Rajneesh Goel, who retires in about a fortnight and for whom this could be the last legislature session while holding the top post, attended the meeting.