BHUBANESWAR: The issue of establishment of legislative council in Odisha has snowballed into a Centre-State row with Assembly Speaker taking exception to Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju’s statement that no such resolution has been received by the Central government. Speaking to mediapersons here on Friday, the Speaker said it is shocking to know the Centre’s contention in the Rajya Sabha that it has not received any resolution passed by Odisha Assembly on setting up the legislative council.
Patro said the Assembly had passed a resolution on establishment of the legislative council in the State on September 18, 2018. All the 104 MLAs present in the House at that time had voted in favour of the resolution, he said and added that copies of the resolution were sent to secretary generals of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, secretaries of Union Law and Justice, Parliament Affairs and other relevant departments.
The Speaker said that a committee headed by BJD MLA Nrusingha Charan Sahu was constituted in 2015 to study the functioning of legislative councils in states having the upper house. The other members of the committee were Pramila Mallik, Bhujbal Majhi, Manohar Randhari and Nitesh Gangdeb.
The committee members visited Karnataka, Maharashtra, Bihar and Telangana and submitted a detailed report to the State government which sent a draft resolution to the Assembly on August 29, 2018, he said. On Thursday, the Union Minister had informed the Rajya Sabha in a written reply to a question from BJD member Prasanna Acharya that as per record no resolution has been received to create a legislative council in Odisha.