The Gujarat assembly will not have a leader of the opposition (LoP) for the first time in the history of the House with speaker Shankar Chaudhary turning down the Congress’s request for it saying the party does not have the numbers required to get the post.
The Gujarat assembly will not have a leader of the opposition (LoP) for the first time in the history of the House with speaker Shankar Chaudhary turning down the Congress’s request for it saying the party does not have the numbers required to get the post
Congress received only 17 seats in the 182-member House in the December 2022 assembly elections. The seats are less than the 10% required for the LoP post. With a record 156 seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) reclaimed power in the state.
On the first day of the Budget session on Thursday, Chaudhary turned down the Congress’ request for the position, days after the party named Amit Chavda as its House leader after the assembly secretariat asked the party to provide a name for it. The party also proposed Chavda as the opposition leader.
In 1985, the ruling Congress agreed to allow the Janata Party to be the opposition leader despite the fact that the latter lacked the necessary numbers.
Congress leader Manish Doshi said the BJP could have taken a similar stand now. “Instead, it declined our request for LoP [post]…This will not stop us from raising the people’s voice in the assembly and outside.”
The Congress has also been the second-largest party in Lok Sabha since 2014 but has not had the LoP post there as it secured less than 10% of seats in the lower House of Parliament in two successive national polls.
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Amit Dholakia, a political science professor at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, said it is not a good sign for a healthy democracy. “The opposition is weak in the assembly…the Congress and AAP [Aam Aadmi Party which has five seats] will have to look at other parliamentary methods to raise the people’s voice.”
He added Congress’s performance in the House was disappointing even as it won 99 seats in the last elections. “The Congress MLAs [members of legislative assembly] did not raise their voices strongly or question the government on important issues, except maybe a few of them.”
Dholakia said that the opposition in Gujarat should keep raising relevant questions on forums such as social media and through mobilization.
Doshi said they had a tough time getting answers from the BJP government even when they had better numbers in the House. “…it will become more challenging. But we will continue to raise the voice of the people of Gujarat in every possible way.”
Congress lawmakers raised slogans and held banners and posters blaming the government for paper leaks in the state as the Gujarat Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Bill was passed on Thursday.
The proposed law seeks to curb paper leaks and provides for a punishment of up to 10 years in jail and ₹1 crore penalty.
Chavda said papers have been leaked repeatedly and the government brought the bill only after Congress raised the issue amid public outcry.
The Congress also raised issues such as unemployment and drug trafficking via Gujarat ports on day one of the Budget session, which began with governor Acharya Devvrat’s speech.
Devvrat called Gujarat a model state in all aspects of human development and people’s well-being.
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