BENGALURU: The Legislative Assembly on Monday passed the motion of thanks on the Governor’s address delivered on January 22, amid walkouts by opposition BJP and JDS, alleging that the government got the governor to deliver the lies.
In all, 27 MLAs from Congress, BJP and JDS debated for 16 hours and ten minutes over the governor’s address.
In his reply, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah took exception to Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot not reading the speech in its entirety and reiterated that it’s unconstitutional as per Article 176.
“The governor read out three sentences in the beginning and chanted Jai Hind, Jai Karnataka at the end and left hurriedly. He did not read Jai Samvidhan which was included in the speech. He should have waited for the playing of the national anthem,” he said.
“Articles 176 and 163 of the Constitution have already been discussed. Ideologies of the opposition and government are different. There is no condition that we both have to agree with each other. But we all have to agree with the Constitution. The government and administration must be run according to the Constitution, which should not be opposed for any reason. The governor is basically a good person. We are not against the governor. But we are opposed to the Central government,” he said.
“The governor’s address had a mention on the Centre repealing MGNREGA and implementing VB-G RAM G and the Union government meting out injustice to the state in tax devolution and release of grants for development projects. Should we not criticise the centre,” he asked.
“The Centre has changed MGNREGA to VB-G RAM G. The Ram in it is not Dasharatha Ram, nor is it Ayodhya Ram,” he mocked.
He recalled that when BJP was in power, it got then governor Hansraj Bhardwaj to read out the address.
When HD Kumaraswamy was chief minister, he had termed MNREGA ‘Udyog Sanjeevini’. But now, he is opposing it after joining hands with BJP, he chided. He read out editorials of various newspapers critical of the governor not reading out the speech in entirety.