The Leader of Opposition and senior Congress leader, Pratapsing Rane, on Monday ridiculed the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party for summoning the Goa Legislative Assembly just for a day on Tuesday.
Mr. Rane said this was obviously done to avoid the lapsing of the State assembly, but was more of an afterthought and “topped a string of poor decisions by the BJP government in its five-year tenure.”
“It is for the first time in the history of the country, that an Assembly session of the outgoing Assembly had to be convened for a day, after the Assembly elections. This has happened because the government is in shambles. There has been no proper decision-making for the last five years.”
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Mr. Rane said, “As MLAs we do not even know what the business for the day-long session is going to be. The government has brought shame to Goa with such shoddy face-saving decisions.”
On Saturday evening, Goa governor Mridula Sinha formally convened a day-long session of the State Legislative Assembly to be held on Tuesday, ostensibly in a bid to avoid a constitutional crisis arising out of the situation where the outgoing State Assembly not being in session for six months.
The Opposition had earlier demanded that the Governor either dissolve the House or convene a session before March 3 to avert a constitutional crisis. But Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar ruled out a session claiming he had been advised against doing so by the Advocate General of the State. He said the crisis emerged because of the decision of the Election Commission to hold on March 11 the counting of votes of the election held on February 4.
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In a representation submitted sent to the Goa governor earlier this month, Goa Congress president Luizinho Faleiro urged the Governor to either summon a session by March 3 or dissolve the Assembly altogether as per Article 174 of the Indian Constitution.