Patna: The five-day winter session of the Bihar legislature, scheduled to begin on Monday, is likely to be stormy as the opposition is set to raise issues like the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, charges against industrialist Gautam Adani’s company, alleged deterioration in the law and order scenario in the state, purported defects in the smart prepaid meter, and farmers facing problems in the land survey exercise.
The session will end on November 29.
Some of the opposition legislators said they would also try to corner the state govt on the issues of ‘atrocities against women’, low remuneration being paid to the members of the Jeevika self-help group, and ‘financial exploitation’ of rural women by some micro-finance companies.
Parliamentary affairs minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said the govt would try to give satisfactory replies to the questions raised by the members during the five-day session. “We have directed all the departmental heads to send replies to the govt on time,” he said.
“Besides raising the law and order-related issues, we will ask the Nitish Kumar-led NDA govt to clear its stand on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill. We will also corner the govt on the problems being faced by poor people and farmers,” Mehboob Alam, the CPI-ML’s legislature party leader in the assembly, told TOI on Sunday.
“We will continue to raise the issues related to Gautam Adani’s company inside and outside the assembly. We also demand his arrest,” said a Congress legislator.
Assembly Speaker Nand Kishore Yadav has asked the state’s chief secretary Amrit Lal Meena to take necessary steps to ensure that answers from the departments concerned to the questions put by the legislators are submitted in time.
In the meantime, JD(U) spokesman and MLC Neeraj Kumar on Sunday took a dig at Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, the leader of the opposition in the assembly, claiming that he may give the winter session a slip out of “political shame”.
Neeraj’s comments in a video message came a day after the NDA swept bypolls to four assembly seats in the state. The NDA retained Imamganj and wrested from the INDIA bloc Tarari, Ramgarh and Belaganj seats.
With losing two seats—Belaganj and Ramgarh—in the byelection, the RJD lost the status of being the “single-largest party” in the 243-member assembly.
The BJP won two seats—Tarari and Ramgarh. With this, the saffron party, with 80 members in the assembly, got the status of the single largest party. Now, the RJD has 77 members.