Speaker urges parties not to disrupt question hour during winter session

At the all-party meeting on Friday, Choudhary sought cooperation from all the leaders to ensure smooth running of the House

The winter session of the Bihar legislature starting Monday is just for five days, but it will herald a new beginning with the introduction of online question reply management system (QRMS). The atmosphere is, however, is likely to remain stormy, with the Opposition ready to raise alleged scams and law and order issues.

Vijay Kumar Choudhary, assembly speaker (HT File Photo)

Assembly Speaker Vijay Kumar Choudhary said that response to the QRMS has been positive so far, with 741 questions, including starred, un-starred and short-notice, received and passed on to the departments concerned for replies.

“The road construction department has been the quickest to reply to 20 of the 23 questions. We have also asked other departments, to expedite the process. All the departments have joint secretary-rank officers as nodal officers. The process is likely to ensure that more questions are taken up during the question hour,” he said, adding that he has directed all the nodal officers to act with urgency.

At the all-party meeting on Friday, Choudhary sought cooperation from all the leaders to ensure smooth running of the House. “The question hour should not be disrupted so that maximum public interest issues raised by the people’s representatives could be taken up,” he said. All the leaders agreed to allow the House to run smoothly.

The hint of Opposition’s stand during the winter session became evident with the tweet of Leader of Opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav soon after his arrival in Patna. “Bihar witnesses another scam of ₹233-crore. Audit in all the districts could make it the biggest ever scam, bigger than Srijan and top guns of the government may be involved in it,” he tweeted.

RJD leader Alok Mehta said there were far too many issues to nail the government, such as Srijan scam and the Muzaffarpur shelter home case.

JD-U spokesman Neeraj Kumar said that all that was expected of RJD was to allow the House to run properly. “Whatever questions they will have, we will answer them. Tejashwi must answer if ‘Laluwad’ is the ideology. If he has any constructive suggestion on governance, he should make it, but sheer negativity will not do,” he added.

On November 27-28, the government will table its bills. One of the bills is related to goods and services tax, while another is related to industrial disputes.

The proposal for hike in the substantial increase in the salary of legislators, approved by the cabinet earlier this week, will also be tabled in both the Houses for ratification.

All eyes will also be on the two Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) legislators – Sudhanshu Shekhar and Lalan Paswan - in the Vidhan Sabha. Despite all kinds of speculations about their likely drift away from their party, they have so far remained with the RLSP.

Over 5.6 lakh applicants for grade four Assembly posts

The number of applicants for jobs in the Bihar Legislative assembly has been huge, especially for the class three and four-grade posts.

Bihar assembly has come up with large-scale recruitment prospects at various levels for the first time. Bulk of the appointments will be made directly through a recruitment agency under the newly formed Bihar Vidhan Sabha (recruitment and service conditions) rules, 2018.

Speaker Vijay Kumar Choudhary said for the class 4 posts, numbering around 160, over 5.60-lakh applications have so far been received. Many of the applicants are said to be graduates and post-graduates. The eligibility for class 4 posts is matriculation.

“For 70 posts for assistants, 1,68,434 applications have been received, while for the 55 posts of reporters the number is 6,379. For the seven posts of lower division clerk, 70120 applications have been received. For the class 4 posts, the response has been overwhelming,” he added.

The Speaker, however, warned unscrupulous elements trying to fleece money in the name of appointments, making it clear that the entire process had been outsourced and nothing was in the hand of any Vidhan Sabha employee.