STAFF REPORTER
GUWAHATI: AICC (All India Congress Committee) secretary Bhupen Kumar Borah and MP Abdul Khaleque have sent a missive to Governor Prof. Jagdish Mukhi appealing him to restore the Leader of Opposition (LOO) status to CLP (Congress Legislative Party) leader Debabrata Saikia.
Meanwhile, in a statement issued to the media here on Thursday, the APCC (Assam Pradesh Congress Committee) condemned the withdrawal of Debabrata Saikia's Leader of Opposition status at the Assam Legislative Assembly by Speaker Hitendranath Goswami. "It's a clear political move just ahead of the state election. The Speaker of the ALA is acting like a BJP agent rather than the Speaker of the House.
"While withdrawing the Leader of the Opposition status, he claimed that the number of Congress MLAs in the House is not sufficient to be in opposition whereas it has been witnessed that many states in India have opposition which are less than 1/6th in number and still have a Leader of Opposition. In fact, as per Section 2 of the Salary and Allowance of the Leader of the Opposition in Assam Legislative Assembly Act, 1978 'Leader of the Opposition' means that the member of the Legislative Assembly who is, for the time being, the Leader of the party in opposition to the Government having the greatest numerical strength and recognized as such by the Speaker. The Act does not state that the number of MLAs to be in opposition should be 1/6th. This means when there are two or more parties in Opposition to the Government having the same numerical strength, the Speaker shall, having regard to the status of the parties, recognise any one of the Leaders of such parties as the Leader of the Opposition for the purposes of this section and such recognition shall be final and conclusive.
"It may also be mentioned that at present, the strength of the Assam Legislative Assembly is 119 instead of 126. Debabrata Saikia should have still been the Leader of Opposition. It is obvious that the BJP is using this Issue as an electoral stunt. People of the state as well as the entire country are aware of the dirty politics the BJP has been involved in. Over the years, they have done no visible development rather, the only thing they have done is divide the people on communal and religious lines.
"The people of the State have now known what they are and the answer to this will be given in the upcoming 2021 Assembly elections," the statement added.