Munda sails through with 45 Ayes

VIJAY DEO JHA
RANCHI 15 September Front Page Nation

In part, CM Arjun Munda statement during confidence motion debate on Tuesday was marked with frequent interruptions but the central theme of his lengthy statements was loud.

“Everybody wished a government in Jharkhand be it Opposition be it Treasury bench…if you want election,” Munda pointedly told the Opposition, “then what are you doing here you should have resigned earlier.”

Munda had a smooth sail to win the confidence motion: 45 Ayes and 30 No. Even Opposition believed that Munda going to win the trust vote was a fate-accompli but it could have filled the trust deficit; that could not happened since five MLAs remained absent during the debate. Congress’ Yogendra Sao, Arup Chatterjee of Marxist Coordination Centre, Bandhu Tirkey of Jharkhand Janadhikar Manch and two independent MLAs in judicial custody — Ainosh Ekka and Harinarayan Rai did not participate in the third special session of the assembly that was convened at Administrative Training Institute.

Munda in his 25 minutes speech took pain to justify as to why his party—the BJP, joined hands with the JMM, AJSU and JD (U) to form government barely three months after it had parted its way.

“In the last ten years Jharkhand has been witnessing fractured mandate. During election all of us campaign for our respective parties but we also ask people to give full mandate to the party they wish,” Munda said.

The decision to join hands with the JMM and other coalition partners, Munda said was the demand of the time. But the major part of his statement, Munda underline the priorities of his government amid constant demand from the Opposition bench to declare entire Jharkhand famine hit.

He announced to hold an all party meeting to obtain a broad view over the drought in Jharkhand and sought the support of the Opposition to deliver a fair, transparent and responsible government ahead to address legions of problems as he said.

“Jharkhand ki janta ke liye hamari ek jaisi pida hai. Is pida ko apni sakti banayen, (We share similar pain for the people of Jharkhand. Let us make this pain our strength).”

It was largely a scene of an insipid Treasury bench matched by another set of uninspired Opposition bench. There were few exceptions in the Opposition occupying the first row, Pradeep Yadav and Samresh Singh who besides grilling Munda and his party; proved that their lungs and vocal cord work quite well.

KN Tripathi of the Congress had done ground work to nail the government and even quoted a portion of the book India in Turmoil written by former Jharkhand Governor Ved Marwah where the latter has leveled certain charges on Munda.

The fear of ongoing probe of the corruption cases by the Vigilance Bureau and the CBI has brought leaders of the alliances together,” Tripathi said.

“The government will not complete its term since the agents and ingredients of instability are still present in the government.” The Opposition provided some momentary relief from monotonous debate with sharp banters hurled at Raghuwar Das of the BJP and others.

But most of the part of the debate stayed over the visit of Munda to Nagpur a day after he took oath to meet the BJP national president Nitin Gadkari and the RSS leaders along with his deputy CMs Hemant Soren of the JMM and Sudesh Kumar Mahato of the AJSU.

“Munda and his ministers forgot Birsa Munda and Chotanagpur. They visited Nagpur instead to seek blessing,” Yadav quipped. Sitting in the back bench the JMM MLA Akil Akthar rose to defend the government but nobody took notice to him.

The Congress was delighted over invectives of its alliance partner, but, it was short-lived. Yadav released payloads of furry and banters against Congress for not dissolving the Assembly even after much demand of the JVM.

“Do not go to RSS. Go to UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi straight and flat down. She gave you the time and opportunity to form government.” Leader of the Opposition and Congress MLA Rajendra Singh in the defence of his party and party chief could only babble: “Congress respects Constitution and its norms.” Singh, otherwise, proved no good speaker today, not even as the leader of Opposition. It was JVM which scored most of the points.

The Opposition wanted Munda’s specific reply over the role of three industrialists (one from Nagpur) in the formation of the government. The poor Hemant was not even able to defend himself as to why he was in so much hurry to unseat his father Shibu Soren as the Chief Minister of the previous government of same composition. “Forget the past. Look ahead,” Hemant hurriedly summed-up.