Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh Assembly adjourned till March 26 in view of the coronavirus scare, settling the suspense over holding of a floor test for the time being.
Governor Lalji Tandon completed his customary address to the House in just one minute and left. “All must follow the rules under the Constitution so that dignity of Madhya Pradesh remains protected,” Tandon said in his brief address.
MLAs of the ruling Congress and opposition BJP had arrived at the Assembly here on Monday morning for the Budget session.
Many legislators could be seen wearing protecting masks in view of the novel coronavirus scare.
These masks were provided by the state Assembly Secretariat as announced earlier by Speaker NP Prajapati.
Prominent members who reached the House included Chief Minister Kamal Nath, BJP vice president and MLA Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Leader of Opposition Gopal Bhargava and others.
The Assembly session began after recitation of Vande Mataram. MLAs also raised slogans of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.
The MLAs of the BJP reached the Assembly in three separate buses along with senior party leaders. They had landed in Bhopal from Manesar in Haryana at around 2 am.
The governor on Saturday night directed the chief minister to seek a trust vote in view of 22 MLAs of the ruling Congress resigning from the party on March 10. The Congress alleges that these 22 MLAs who submitted their resignations are being held "captive" by the BJP.
Madhya Pradesh Assembly Speaker N P Prajapati has accepted the resignations of six of these MLAs.
Chief Minister Kamal Nath had called on Governor Lalji Tandon late Sunday. Coming out of the Raj Bhavan around 12:20 am, Nath told reporters that the governor had called him for a discussion.
"The governor told me that the proceedings of the state assembly should be carried out smoothly. So I told him that I will talk to the speaker in this regard on Monday morning," he said.
Asked if the floor test will be conducted on Monday as directed by the governor, the chief minister said the speaker would take a decision on this.
Nath said he has already communicated to the governor in writing that his government was ready for the floor test but the MLAs held "captive" should be released first.
Only raising of hands allowed
Tandon on Sunday wrote to Nath saying that the rust vote should be taken up only through raising of hands and not by any other method.
Notably, in his letter to the CM ordering a trust vote on Saturday, the governor had directed that the division of votes during the floor test be conducted only by pressing the button (through the electronic voting system) and by no other way.
However, the governor issued new directives on Sunday after a delegation of BJP leaders urged him to direct the speaker to conduct the floor test by raising of hands. They claimed that the electronic voting system is not in place in the Assembly.
A former minister and an expert on legislative matters, Choudhary Rakesh Singh Chaturvedi opined that the governor should not have ordered a floor test without physically verifying the resignations of the 22 MLAs.
On Tuesday, 19 MLAs had e-mailed their resignations to the governor.
"How can the governor be confident that the letters of these MLAs are genuine and are not written under any pressure," he asked.
MLAs in Bhopal
On Sunday, the Congress MLAs, who were staying in two resorts at Jaipur, returned to Bhopal.
Nearly 90 Congress MLAs from Bhopal arrived at the Jaipur airport and went back in a flight.
Meanwhile, the Congress has decided to approach the Supreme Court. The Madhya Pradesh Congress had issued a whip to all its MLAs asking them to be present in the House from March 16 to April 13 during the Assembly session and vote in favour of the government during the floor test.
After staying at a hotel in Gurugram's Manesar for five days, the BJP MLAs reached Bhopal on a special flight in the wee hours of Monday. The MLAs were taken to a hotel from the airport.
Leader of Opposition Gopal Bhargava and BJP state President B D Sharma received the MLAs at the Raja Bhoj Airport. Meanwhile, special security arrangements were made at the airport.
On Sunday, Pankaj Sharma, Kamal Nath's media advisor, claimed that 9 BJP MLAs would support Congress during the floor test.
The Kamal Nath government in the state is on the brink of collapse after 22 MLAs, supporters of Jyotiraditya Scindia who had quit the Congress and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), resigned. With this, the strength of the House is down to 222, with the majority mark 112. Before the rebellion early this week, the Congress's tally was 114. It also had the support of four Independent MLAs, two legislators from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and one from the Samajwadi Party (SP).
(With inputs from PTI)
