Speaker’s sitting dilemma
Queerly enough, Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal who is used to be battered with breach of privileges brought by aggrieved MlAs when the Assembly is on has himself been recently subjected to the same. This happened when Chief Minister Harish Rawat convened a review meeting in Almora while he was in Kumaon. The Speaker, who is an MlA from the region, accompanied the CM. However, the officials did not make the right sitting arrangements for him as per the stature the Speaker enjoys. It is clear in the Constitution that the Speaker enjoys a stature higher than that of the CM. The officials, perhaps unwittingly, had made him sit on the left of the CM-something that amounts to a privilege the Speaker enjoys. May be, the Speaker attended it as an MlA from Kumaon region. Other MlAs representing the region also attended it. However, the glitch comes on the point that excluding the sitting arrangement, he was allowed to avail all privileges he enjoys as the Speaker, including the pilot car that escorted him to the venue.
Invoking Governor
Kedarnath shrine where thousands perished after June 2013 deluge wreaked havoc, is now seeing the footfalls of many a dignitary. Since the portal was opened for the devotees the Governor has visited it twice — once during the portal-opening ceremony in late April and again on June 14. As per the Raj Bhawan Press note, he visited the shrine the latter time to see for himself how the yatra is going on. His exemplary public-spiritedness endearing him to the people at large, the devotees who throng the famous Dat Kali Temple are now praying to him to visit the temple through the much- trodden road from Dehradun to realize how they are having harrowing time to reach it. They say they remain stuck in the serpentine traffic snarl every time they visit. It takes tedious two hours to reach the temple from Dehradun. Things are so as the place falls in UP’s jurisdiction. That being the last point of UP, the officials manning it cannot care less for the predicament the temple visitors face. The same plight awaits those who come to Dehradun from Delhi or go to Saharanpur from Dehradun via Mohand. Seemingly at the end of their tether, the harried people are expecting that the missionary Governor would see things for himself one blessed day and would rid them of the experiences they are undergoing day after dragging day.