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| Public anguished by conduct of MLAs, disenchanted with LA proceedings | | | Bashir Assad
Jammu, Mar 10: While the Legislative Assembly has chalked out a calendar of 11 days for debate on grants of different departments beginning March 12, for 11 days, people in general refuse to be enthused or impressed by the antics of the legislature and show no interest in the business of the House.
For varying reasons, the people of the state who once used to attribute great significance to the budget session of the bicameral legislature of the state, this time around, show no interest in the business of the house.
Some argue that the state assembly has become a theatre and the legislators 'act' to invite the attention of the media. As for the genuine concerns of the people, the legislators hardly bother about the same. There is total non-seriousness in debating the issues confronting the people. Very often it has been noticed that ministers who face volley of questions on matters of public importance, instead of replying the questions with seriousness, indulge in verbal jugglery and gimmicks. Some ministers prefer to
remain absent from the house just to avoid questions and some play with the words to avoid any direct reply.
Though the entire opposition too has failed in playing its role of healthy opposition, instead waste the time in uproars, slogan shouting, walk-outs and adjournments, however, the treasury benches are resorting to worst kind of political gimmickry and have eroded the credibility of the House by indulging into mere squabbling with the opposition benches. Only recently, the treasury benches created
history by disrupting the proceedings of the house and didn't allow it to run the normal business scheduled for the day. And shockingly not only MLAs even ministers walked into the well of the house to disrupt the question hour.
Non seriousness of the legislators could also be gauged from the fact that only eight questions could be taken up for discussion for first seven days of business. The entire question hour during the first five days was wasted during which only seven were taken up for discussion that too on March 5. As such out of 98 listed questions for seven days only 8 were taken up for discussion. Two questions were taken on March 3, 5 and 7 and 3 on March 8 while as the question hour on March 6 was disrupted on Baramulla killing. The sanctity, if any, was butchered by a minister when he openly gave vent to his personal animosity with a senior opposition leader and used abusive language against him in the house, with the opposition MLA also behaving in same stead. The Level and quality of debate in the state legislature has drastically plummeted and the legislators have over the years failed to improve their proficiency.
So what has superseded everything in the legislature is shrugging off and brushing aside whatever the oppositions says while the role of opposition has been reduced to creating uproar, staging walk-outs and what is rather unique in our bicameral legislature is the fact that regions are placed against each other for mere political interests which has completely polarized the state posing a great rather
potential threat to the secular character of the state.
This has been a consistent approach of political actors represented in the state assembly to score brawny political points. For last 10 or 12 days if anything dominates the house is provoking such reactions from members which then automatically result in winding up the actual legislative business without yielding anything substantive.
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