BJP to question logic behind Prez rule extension

Vijay Deo Jha RANCHI Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Spell and thundershower are likely to occur when the UPA Government will table the bill to seek ratification of the extension of the President’s Rule (PR) in Jharkhand on the floor of the lower house of Lok Sabha on Monday.

After BJP MP Arjun Munda already announced to bring ‘disapproval motion’ against the proposed extension; the proceedings of the house is expected to be full of uproar and disruption. Munda along with other seven MPs of Jharkhand will be on the forefront to protest the bill. Karia Munda is the deputy speaker of the House.

“We will seek an answer from the UPA Government and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the logic behind the extension of the President’s Rule in Jharkhand,” Munda said this to The Pioneer over telephone from New Delhi. Sources in the central BJP informed about a meeting of the senior party leaders about a close door meeting. In the meeting Munda along with senior party leader and MP Yaswant Sinha were asked to stir the debate when Union Home Minister P Chidambaram will table the bill.

Independent MP Indersingh Namdhari who has been trying to get the time from the chair will also raise BJP’s voices in the House. “I am trying to get the time to put up my point on this issue. But I will certainly like to join the debate to seek an early dissolution of the State assembly and a fresh election alongside. It is politically wrong to keep the assembly under suspended animation after no political party or alliance staked claim to form Government in the State,” Namdhari said.

If the BJP has planned to set a cat among the pigeons the Congress is unperturbed. “There is no cause to worry, this bill will have a safe passage in the House,” a senior Congress leader said over telephone from New Delhi.

But the BJP MPs will use each ‘allotted and snatched minute’ to pile on facts after facts; using their head and memory for statistics to expose the UPA’s design in Jharkhand. The BJP’s high octane note in the house might not have a much political impact. But the party will find solace in its effort to paint the Congress as politically bankrupt.

Even the Congress leaders in their private discourse accepted that the party should take a final decision over the fate of the State assembly as it is creating confusion among the UPA MLAs who have knocked doors of every central Congress leaders to allow them to form Government.

Over the fate of the State assembly and PR in Jharkhand a senior Congress leader said that the assembly could be dissolved in the month of August.

It should be noted that the six-months period of the President’s Rule in Jharkhand will expire on July 19 and the Centre is required to seek ratification of both the Houses to extend PR. The Union Cabinet in its meeting held on July 2 had taken a decision to extend PR in Jharkhand.

The State BJP in the meeting of the working committee already resolved to launch a mass agitation programme for early dissolution of the Assembly. The programme which is scheduled to be launched under the name of ‘Delhi Chale’ Munda was authorised to chalk out the programme.

The best part of the lively debate over PR will take place in the Lok Sabha but one can probably find the UPA MLAs of Jharkhand including State Congress president Pradeep Balmuchu and others who have not lost hope for yet another Government in Jharkhand. But best wishes are not with them.