Dehradun, Feb 5 (PTI) Opposition Congress MLAs on Monday walked out of a meeting of the Business Advisory Committee of Uttarakhand Assembly in protest against its decision to waive the Question Hour in the special assembly session to table a bill on the UCC.
The bill on the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) will be presented in the House on Tuesday, followed by a debate on it.
Asked about the protest by the opposition members, Speaker Ritu Khanduri said, “UCC is a going to be a very important law, not just for Uttarakhand but for the whole country. The Question Hour is important too but sometimes things are so significant that take precedence over routine procedures of the House,” Khanduri said.
Later in the day, a delegation led by Leader of Opposition in Uttarakhand Assembly Yashpal Arya met the governor and handed over a memorandum letter signed by all 19 Congress MLAs, including him, to register their protest and sought his intervention in the matter.
Waiving the Question Hour and not taking up matters of urgent public interest is a violation of the rules of conducting House business and shows the government’s total disregard for constitutional and parliamentary norms, the letter said and urged the Governor to issue necessary instructions to the government and “protect the constitution”.
The Congress MLAs also challenged the constitutionality of the decision of waiving the Question Hour on technical grounds.
The ongoing session of the state assembly is not a special session as the previous session of the House had not been prorogued, they argued.
Apart from Arya, the letter was signed by MLAs Pritam Singh , Bhuvan Kapri, Rajendra Singh Bhandari, Harish Singh, Mamata Rakesh, Furkan Ahmad, and Tilak Raj Behar, among 11 others.
Asked whether the Congress members had resigned from the business advisory committee of the House, Speaker Khanduri said she had not received any such communication from them so far.
Before the start of the special session on UCC on Monday, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said the UCC will be “for the good of all sections” and there is no need to worry as he urged members of other parties to debate the bill in the House in a positive manner. PTI ALM RPA
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