Day after spat, CM, Speaker skip House; RJD fuels the fire

While the Speaker remained seated inside his chamber, meeting MLAs who dropped in out of curiosity, the chief minister was away in Maner Sharif, a Sufi shrine on the outskirts of Patna.

Pandemonium prevailed in Bihar assembly on Tuesday, forcing adjournment of the pre-lunch session, after opposition RJD members staged noisy protests alleging that chief minister Nitish Kumar had insulted Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha the previous day and demanded an apology.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar offers a chadar at Maner Sharif, in Patna on Tuesday. (Santosh Kumar/HT Photo)

The House had witnessed an unprecedented outburst from the chief minister on Monday when an issue relating to Lakhisarai, which is the Speaker’s assembly constituency, was raised by a couple of members.

Both Sinha and Kumar chose not to attend the House on Tuesday.

While the Speaker remained seated inside his chamber, meeting MLAs who dropped in out of curiosity, the chief minister was away in Maner Sharif, a Sufi shrine on the outskirts of the state capital, where he ducked queries from journalists about the stalemate with a cryptic smile and a wave.

Senior BJP legislator Prem Kumar sat on the chair to preside over the proceedings.

As soon as the House sat for the day, RJD’s senior members like Bhai Virendra, Awadh Bihari Choudhary and Lalit Yadav alleged that Kumar had conducted himself in an undemocratic manner by trying to interfere with the way House was being conducted by the Speaker.

“The Speaker was insulted yesterday. The Chair is the highest authority in the House. The entire House is anguished,” said Lalit Yadav. Awadh Bihari Choudhary said the chief minister should apologize.

Parliamentary affairs minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary, however, dismissed the accusations. “The chief minister did not use any unparliamentary word or insulted the Chair. He only underlined that roles of the legislation and executive were clearly defined in the Constitution. He had only urged the Speaker to run the house as per rules with folded hands. Utmost respect was shown to the Chair ,” the minister said.

However, RJD members remained unmoved.

As the din continued, the House was adjourned till post lunch session within 10 minutes after it sat for the day.

The Speaker has been miffed with some arrests in a case of prohibition violation in Lakhisarai and the privilege committee had last week recommended action against a couple of police officials who were disrespectful towards Sinha when he broached the matter with them.

The contention of Kumar was that government was looking into the matter and it was wrong on part of Sinha to allow the matter to be raised inside the House “again and again”.

Kumar spoke for a few minutes, quivering with rage and stunning the House into silence. The Speaker, who has previously served under Kumar as a minister, said he respected his knowledge of the Constitution and experience but expressed the helplessness in dealing with a recalcitrant bureaucracy.

It is, however, being speculated in political circles that Kumar’s loss of cool stemmed from his frustration over having lost the upper hand to the BJP, which had been a junior alliance partner until the 2020 assembly polls.

With far fewer MLAs than the BJP, Kumar returned as chief minister for the fourth consecutive term but had to give his ally many concessions, including a higher number of cabinet berths and, importantly, the post of the Speaker.

In the highest seat of power since 2005, Kumar has always succeeded in having one of his confidants, from his own party JD(U), as the speaker. For his first two terms in office, it was Uday Narayan Chaudhary who has since burnt bridges and moved over to the RJD.

In 2015, when Kumar allied with RJD and returned to power with a few seats less than Lalu Prasad’s party, he still had his way and Vijay Kumar Chaudhary was elected to the post of the speaker.

Vijay Kumar Sinha became the first BJP leader in the state’s history to have occupied the post, a fact the party likes to flaunt.