It was left to parliamentary affairs minister Srikanta Jena to point out the illegality of the proceedings in the assembly on Wednesday, when the Suresh Mehta government had claimed to have won a vote of confidence.
Not only was it a voice vote, Jena pointed out that no one had been in the chair to call the house to order when the chief minister proposed that one of the panel of vice-chairmen take the chair. This is total vacuum, he said. In the absence of a chairman, how can the house function? So whatever they are saying about majority or anything has no relevance.
Gupta chose innuendo and allegation instead. Allegations have been levelled that on the evening of September 17, the chief minister and 20 other MLAs have pressured the deputy speaker to change his earlier ruling, his statement said.
Noting that some of those whom the chief minister called in to remove opposition members from the assembly were not in uniform, he said: We don't know who those people in plainclothes were, whether they were policement or anyone else.
He also remarked about the BJP that the top leaders of this party seem to have completely failed to settle the dispute within their party.
For a year, therehas been horse trading and changing of loyalties and allegiances. He added that the BJP had insisted on injecting the issue into Parliament, disrupting part of the recent session.
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Talking about the late speaker, Harish Chandra Patel, Gupta's statement said that various reports indicate that during this period, he was terminally ill and in a comatose condition. ...The CM, however, manages to reconvene the session at 3.30 p.m. on the same day after allegedly obtaining an order to that effect from the ailing speaker.
The home minister added that his state of health was such that there are doubts whether he was even in a position to sign a piece of paper. er>