Bihar: Speaker chairs all-party meeting ahead of monsoon session

Bihar legislative assembly Speaker Awadh Bihari Choudhary directed officials to ensure government replies to all questions during the upcoming monsoon session. Choudhary also chaired an all-party meeting, expressing confidence in positive discussions and debate on public issues.

Ahead of the monsoon session, Bihar legislative assembly Speaker Awadh Bihari Choudhary held a meeting of officials and ministers on Friday and directed nodal officers of various departments to ensure government replies to all questions to be raised in the House during the session.

Congress leaders stage a protest in Patna on Friday in support of party leader Rahul Gandhi after Gujarat High Court dismissed his plea seeking a stay on his conviction in a criminal defamation case. (Santosh Kumar/HT)

The monsoon session will have five sittings between July 10 and July 15.

Later in the day, the Speaker also chaired an all-party meeting, which was attended by parliamentary affairs minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary, leader of Opposition in the assembly, Vijay Kumar Sinha, planning minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav, rural development minister Shravan Kumar, Congress legislature party leader Shakeel Ahmed Khan, RJD leader Lalit Yadav, HAM( S) founder and former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, CPI-ML (Liberation) legislator Mehboob Alam, CPI-M legislator Ajay Kumar and AIMIM legislator Akhtarul Iman.

Addressing the meeting, the Speaker said he was confident that there would be positive discussion and debate on public issues and both the ruling and Opposition members would take part in healthy discussions to address people’s issues. “ It will be my endeavour to ensure that the House runs smoothly as per rules of legislative business and government replies to questions raised by members regarding public welfare,” Choudhary said.

The Speaker also chaired a meeting with the press advisory committee where he urged media persons to highlight issues of state’s development and people centric issues discussed in the House.

In Bihar, chief minister Nitish Kumar heads an alliance government, with his party JD-U, Lalu Yadav’s RJD and the Congress as its main constituents. Left parties support the government from the outside.

The BJP is the main Opposition party, while Manjhi’s HAM(S), which has four members in the assembly, exited the ruling alliance last month.