Gujarat Assembly admits no-confidence motion moved by Congress against Speaker for 'favouring' BJP

Gandhinagar: The Gujarat Legislative Assembly admitted the no-confidence motion moved on Thursday by the Opposition Congress against Speaker Rajendra Trivedi for “acting in a biased manner in favour of the ruling BJP”. [caption id=“attachment_3823619” align=“alignnone” width=“380”]  File image of Gujarat Assembly. PTI[/caption] As per the Gujarat Assembly rules, the motion has to be put to vote within seven days of its admission. All the Congress MLAs supported the motion when it was read out in the House for admission. It was decided that the business advisory committee will fix the final date for discussion and voting on the motion. The first item on the agenda of the House after the Question Hour was admission of the no-confidence motion. When it was read out, over 60 Congress MLAs, who were present in the House, stood up in its support as against the requirement of the support of 17 MLAs. The speaker announced that the motion has been admitted and will be put to vote as per the decision of the business advisory committee. Congress leader Sailesh Parmar had filed the no-confidence motion application on 28 February with the assembly secretariat. As per the Rule 103 of the legislative assembly, once the application for no-confidence motion is filed, it has to be admitted in the House after 14 working days and once it is admitted, it has to be taken up for discussion and voting within seven days. Talking to reporters later, Leader of Opposition Paresh Dhanani said the motion was moved by his party as the speaker showed “complete bias in his decisions in favour of the ruling BJP”. On 28 February, Trivedi had suspended 15 Congress MLAs for a day, and another MLA Asha Patel for two days, for rushing to the Well of the House and raising slogans. On 14 March, the speaker had suspended three Congress MLAs, two — Amrish Der and Pratap Dudhat — for three years and another one Baldevji Thakor for a year, after they indulged in violence in the house. The BJP has a majority in the house with 99 MLAs while the Congress has 77 members. So, if the motion is taken for voting, the speaker is unlikely to face any trouble.