The opposition Janata Dal in Orissa yesterday issued a notice for moving a no confidence motion against the Congress government headed by JB Patnaik in the brief Monsoon session of the assembly scheduled to begin here today.
The decision to table the motion was taken at the meeting of the Janata Dal legislature party (JDLP) here yesterday. The one line motion said, this house does not have the confidence in the council of ministers headed by JB Patnaik.
Meanwhile, the statutory notice on the motion, signed by 24 of the 44 Dal MLas present in the JDLP meet, has been sent to the speaker of the assembly.
Later talking to newsmen, state Dal unit president Ashok Das and JDLP secretary Prasanna Acharya said the need for bringing such a motion rose because of all round failure of the government particularly in the field of maintaining law and order, checking corruption and fiscal discipline.
They further said Dal would seek the support of all the non-Congress parties including BJP in favour of the motion when it comes up for discussion in the house. This is the first instance of no-trust move against Patnaik in his current term as the Chief Minister.
However, the Dals effort to mobilise support of other opposition parties notwithstanding, the motion is likely to prove infructuous with the ruling Congress enjoying absolute majority in the House. In the 147-member assembly, the Congress has 79 MLAs with the rest comprising of 44 from Janata Dal, 10 from BJP, five from Jharkhand parties, one each from CPI and SUCI and seven independents including the speaker. With some independents expected to come out in support of the government, observers feel, the ruling party may sail through the motion with ease.
The no-trust move apart, the two seek long monsoon session beggining from tomorrow is likely to be stormy with the opposition determined to put the treasury bench on the mat on several tricky iissues including allegation of rape attempt against the states adovocate general, law and order problem, allegation of payment of kickbacks in certain government deals, foreign visits of Chief Minister and deputy chief minister BK Biswal for private purposes and government failure to tackle the drought and flood situations in the state.
