RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, Aug.4: The BJP MLAs today stormed into the well of the Assembly during the Question hour seeking reply of Chief Minister Hemant Soren on the ‘burning issues’ like recruitment policy, corruption, murder, ‘draconian’ anti-cheating law among others.
The anti-cheating bill mandates one year jail term for candidates caught involved in adopting unfair means during the competitive examination and three years for repeat offenders. For others found involved in a paper leak, the punishment can go up to life imprisonment and a fine of Rs 10 crore.
The bill paves a path for jail for examinees and examination agencies without any preliminary investigation and registration of an FIR in case of adopting unfair means during competitive examinations.
The BJP MLAs were so offensive today that they even ignored their questions. BJP’s Bokaro MLA Biranchi Narayan declared boycotting their questions saying they are not more important than the burning issues of the state and demanded a reply from the chief minister.
The BJP legislators had entered the house after they met Governor C.P. Radhakrishnan to register their objection over the Jharkhand Competitive Examination (Measures for Prevention of Unfair Means in Recruitment) Bill, 2023 cleared from the assembly on Thursday.
Though Speaker Rabindranath Mahto requested the BJP legislators to allow the question hour to run but the latter did not budge and finally at 11.30am, the speaker declared adjournment till 12noon.
Before the House was adjourned, Congress MLAs, Dipika Pandey Singh and Pradeep Yadav expressed their concern over the BJP legislators knocking the door of Raj Bhawan to lodge their protest against a bill passed in the larger interest of the students. Singh said she had observed that Raj Bhawan is regularly interfering in the assembly matter at the behest of the BJP and this is not in the state’s interest. She said earlier the Raj Bhawan returned three bills related to OBC reservation and two others. Yadav echoed her saying the bill passed yesterday is in the interest of students.
Amid uproar, Finance Minister Rameshwar Oraon replying to a query of Pradeep Yadav on the state’s outstanding with union government cleared that the state government does not want to take any confrontation with the union government on the issue as the matter is being sorted out. Earlier, Oraon presented the figure of outstanding amount of more than Rs. one lakh crore.
After the house proceedings started at 12 noon and notices of zero hours were being read, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Alamgir Alam raised the issue of unruly behavior of BJP’s Panki legislator Mehta Shashi Bhusan Prasad and sought apology from him. Prasad apologised saying the Congress legislator Irfan Ansari should be warned against giving any derogatory statement in the House. Around 12.35 pm the House proceedings were also adjourned till 2pm after the CAG report was presented in the House.
