Madhya Pradesh speaker adjourns House till March 26 citing Covid-19

Bhopal: Political suspense heightened in Madhya Pradesh with the Speaker of the assembly adjourning the assembly till March 26 and governor Lalji Tandon countering it by asking Chief Minister Kamal Nath and the Speaker to conduct the floor test on Tuesday.

In an unusual wording, the governor’s letter said if the government did not prove its majority in the House by Tuesday, it would be considered to be in a minority.

The assembly began with Governor’s address. Tandon chose to read out only the last para of the last page of his address and left the House.

“The pride of Madhya Pradesh shouldn’t be harmed and I advise that everything should be done as per constitutional norms,” Tandon said in the House before leaving. When Speaker NP Prajapati started proceedings, opposition leader Gopal Bhargava stood up to read the governor’s letter to the CM and Speaker.

The letter said that the House should take the trust vote immediately after his address. When BJP leaders demanded the floor test, the Speaker said “your correspondence has taken place with the Governor and not with the Speaker”.

He then adjourned the session till March 26 citing it as a precautionary measure following the Covid-19 pandemic. “As you all must be aware, because of coronavirus spread, assemblies of Rajasthan, Kerala, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra have adjourned their ongoing sessions.

It would be difficult to prevent MLAs from meeting in groups during the session,” Prajapati said in his statement. Later, Bhargava and BJP chief whip Narottam Mishra went to the Speaker’s chamber to submit an affidavit that said the party had the support of 106 MLAs. BJP moved the
Supreme Court against the Speaker’s decision and paraded 106 MLAs at Raj Bhavan. “The coming two days are going to be troublesome for Congress as they are defying the order of the Governor.

How can a minority government make transfer and postings? They are playing with democratic values and we have trust on both the constitutional office of governor and the Supreme Court. We will wait for their directions,” Mishra told ET. Nath, however, seemed confident. “If BJP thinks it has the majority, then who is stopping it from bringing a no-confidence motion? We will prove the majority on the floor,” he told media persons.

Meanwhile, brother of Congress MLA Manoj Chaudhary wrote a letter to the Governor demanding his brother’s release from Bengaluru. By evening, BJP shifted its MLAs out of Bhopal.

Congress sources claimed that some BJP MLAs were in touch with them. However, BJP state unit president BD Sharma told ET “none of our MLAs are in touch with the Congress. They are just spreading a rumour”. BJP MLA Narayan Tripathy was not present in the BJP camp and went to meet Nath but Sharma said “he is with us”.