The ongoing controversy over the appointment of senior BJP leader Babulal Marandi as the leader of opposition once again surfaced on the first day of the Monsoon session of Jharkhand Assembly, when the main opposition party BJP refused to read out the condolence proposal in the Assembly.
The BJP alleges that the BJP legislature party leader Babulal Marandi was not given the opportunity to read the condolence motion in the House, stating the Speaker is making delay in recognizing Marandi as Leader of the Opposition in the House.
As soon as the house began, BJP MLA from Bhawanthpur Bhanu Pratap Shahi raised the issue of not recognizing Babulal Marandi as the Leader of the Opposition and asked the House why Marandi was not recognized as the Leader of the Opposition. On this, Speaker Rabindra Nath Mahto asked the BJP legislator to raise the issue later, to which BJP other lawmakers such as Viranchi Narayan, Anant Ojha, Neelkanth Singh Munda and former Speaker CP Singh too came in support of Shahi.
During this, Speaker Mahato advised the BJP MLAs to discuss the condolence motion, but the BJP MLAs refused to acknowledge Speaker’s advice and kept on creating ruckus. The Speaker expressing his displeasure said that this is not a good tradition. It may be noted that in the house, Speaker Mahato and CM Hemant Soren were condoling the death of people in the second wave of corona pandemic.
Almost one and half years after the Babulal Marandi-led Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) merged with the BJP in February last year, the Jharkhand Assembly Speaker Rabindra Nath Mahato is yet to take a decision on granting status of Leader of Opposition (LoP) to him due to cases under Anti-defection law pertaining to 10th schedule of the Constitution. For the last one and half years, the Jharkhand Assembly has been without LoP.
As the ruckus of BJP legislators continued, the Chief Minister after reading out the condolence message also praised the excellent performance of Indian players in the Tokyo Olympics and said that these players made the country proud. CM also praised Jharkhand hockey players Nikki Pradhan and Salima Tete.
At the same time, along with Speaker Rabindra Nath Mahto, the party and opposition paid tribute to all the personalities who passed away recently including Uttar Pradesh former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh legendary athlete Milkha Singh, Soli Sorabji, Pandit Rajan Mishra, Dilip Kumar, Chandan Mitra, Jagannath Pahadia, RL Bhatia, after which the proceedings of the assembly were adjourned till Monday.
The monsoon session of the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly, which started from September 3, will continue till September 9. The supplementary budget can be presented in the house on Monday (September 6). At the same time, questions can also be asked during the Chief Minister’s Question Hour. For this, the Chief Minister
has also assigned department-wise responsibilities to several ministers.