Jammu and Kashmir Assembly Speaker Abdul Rahim on Thursday earlier rejected the Bharatiya Janata Party’s demand to roll back the special status resolution passed by the House of Representatives or resign, saying that if the party has no confidence in him, this should cause distrust. movement.
IMAGE: MLAs were involved in a scuffle over demands for the restoration of Article 370, forcing the Speaker to postpone the proceedings for the day. Photo: Umar Ganie for Rediff.com
He also reprimanded the party for its “cheap slogans” and said he cannot tolerate members entering the Well of the House and stomping over the national emblem placed on the chair of the Assembly Secretary.
“They (BJP) ask the Speaker to take back the resolution. The Speaker does not have the powers. Everything passed by the House can only be undone by the House itself. Speakers can’t do it. The Speaker has limited powers on these issues… he must preside, count and make decisions based on the facts before him,” Liever told PTI.
The Assembly on Wednesday passed a resolution asking the Center to work out a constitutional mechanism for restoring the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, which was revoked on August 5, 2019.
The resolution was praised by Valley-based political parties, while it sparked protests from the main opposition BJP, which demanded its rollback.
The passing of the resolution led to an uproar in the House of Representatives as the BJP members protested vociferously.
They have not allowed the House to function for two days in a row now and are demanding that the Speaker withdraw the resolution or resign.
He earlier expressed amusement over the BJP’s binary system by asking him to resign or withdraw the resolution.
“How can a speaker do that? My advice to them is to go through the meeting rules and then talk in the House of Representatives,” he said.
The Speaker said if BJP members do not have confidence in him as Speaker of the House of Representatives, they should follow due procedure to remove him.
“I’m not worried, but if they don’t have confidence in the chairman, shouting slogans is still not the right way to go. There is a procedure for a motion of no confidence.
“They should table a motion of no confidence. If the House approves it, I will come back on my own, whether any Member tells me or not. However, they won’t do that either, they just keep raising slogans.
“These kinds of cheap slogans are not done. They belong to the ruling party at the Centre. They should keep that in mind and they should behave better than others. Their behavior is not right,” he said.
While exiting some BJP MLAs from the House on Thursday, the Speaker said he has given clear instructions to the marshals to prevent members from entering the Well, while some BJP MLAs during their protests stamped over the national emblem placed on the seat of the Secretary of the Assembly was posted. against Wednesday’s resolution.
“Yesterday, some members entered the Well of the House and stood on the chair of the Secretary of the Legislative Assembly. His seat had the national emblem on it and they stepped on the national emblem with their shoes on.
“As a speaker, how can I tolerate that? When I saw it yesterday, I felt extremely sad. After all, we are Indians first and foremost. We must respect our flag and emblem,” he added.
Earlier said, an MLA must set a good example for people outside the House of Representatives.
“If he does such things, what will the Speaker do? So today I had given instructions that if anyone enters the Source, he must be stopped. What is his job there? Anyone who wants to speak must do so from his or her How can they get into the pit and then stand on the chairs?
“There is a new woman MLA (Shagun Parihar of the BJP), she has learned the same thing. She does the same things that the senior members do. She thinks this is what needs to be done and she was also in the forefront. chairs today. It has a bad effect on others,” he said.
On the resolution of a group of MLAs of the PDP, People’s Conference and Awami Ittehad Party, the Speaker said he has not yet received it.
‘It didn’t reach me. So I don’t know. However, there is a proper procedure for submitting resolutions. It must be submitted to the secretariat of the meeting and the secretary will examine it and submit it to the chairman. is admitted, the President must inform the government so that they can prepare. You cannot take a document, read it in the House and call it a resolution,” he said.
It is said that there are 51 new MLAs in the current assembly and he has planned a training for them before the budget session.
“I wanted to conduct a training session for them on how to conduct themselves in the House of Representatives, but due to the limited time between the elections and the session, we could not do that. We will now get it before the budget session in Jammu.” he said.