The third day of the second session of the Vidhan Sabha this year was dominated by ruckus raised by the Opposition and Treasury benches regarding the deteriorating law and order situation in the State apart from which the Opposition also continued to demand extension of the session by two days to discuss various issues.
The session which had begun on September 18 was adjourned sine-die after its sitting on Friday. Dissatisfied at the session not being extended by two days as purportedly promised by the ruling party in the meet of the House business advisory committee, leader of the Opposition Ajay Bhatt resigned from the committee. The Opposition members staged protest on the well of the House against the State Government before the House was adjourned sine-die. The Opposition remained inside the House protesting late in the evening with Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna meeting them to reach a solution.
At the start of the proceedings on Friday, Bhatt said that the reluctance of the State Government to extend the session by three days raised doubts at its intentions. "Under rule 310, the debate was to be focused only on the recent disaster, but the Government got its financial business cleared during the debate. We had earlier demanded that this session should be held for at least 7-10 days to facilitate detailed debate on disaster and other important issues and the Treasury benches gave us the impression that the session would be extended by three days but by not agreeing to do so, the State government has broken our trust and set a bad example," he said.
Opposition members cited a media report about the Uttarakhand Governor Dr Aziz Qureshi applying for a gun license and stated that this was a sign of the deteriorating law and order situation in the State. Doiwala MlA and former CM Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' persistently questioned what was the State Government's objection to extending the session by two days to debate on various important issues.
The Opposition members said that the MlAs were answerable to their voters and without satisfactory answers to their questions, they would not be able to provide satisfactory answers to the public. Replying to the allegations, Parliamentary Affairs minister Indira Hridayesh said that the session was not being extended as the House had completed its business and that there was not further business for the session to be extended. The Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal said that the members had had a meaningful debate on disaster for two days but expressed his dissatisfaction at the commotion towards the end of the debate.
"I am very sad because of the commotion raised by the Opposition towards the end of this debate when the gist of the debate would have emerged. The House needed to send a positive message to the public at the end of the debate on discussion under rule 310," he pointed out. The House was adjourned five times on Friday. While the Speaker was speaking towards the fag end of the post lunch proceedings, the Opposition members began protesting on the well of the House raising slogans against the State government.
later while Disaster Management minister Yashpal Arya was speaking about the measures taken by the government following the disaster, Roorkee MlA Sanjay Gupta snatched the written speech from his hands while other Opposition MlAs tossed papers in the air and towards the Speaker's chair.
While the Opposition continued to stress that the Treasury bench had no substance for replying to questions on disaster and issues like the situation of law and order in view of the shooting by MlA Pranav Singh 'Champion', the Treasury bench maintained that the Opposition was not interested in a serious debate.