Gujarat Congress moves no-confidence motion against Assembly Speaker after accusing him of partisanship

Gandhinagar: The Gujarat Congress on Wednesday moved a no-confidence motion against state Assembly Speaker Rajendra Trivedi, after accusing him of behaving in a partisan manner. The no-confidence motion comes in the second week after Trivedi, an MLA from Raopura in Vadodara, was unanimously elected to the post on 19 February. “We have submitted a no-confidence motion against the Speaker to the Assembly Secretary on Wednesday,” senior Congress MLA Shailesh Parmar told PTI. Earlier, addressing the media, Leader of the Opposition Paresh Dhanani said the Speaker had been behaving in a “totally partisan” manner. [caption id=“attachment_3823595” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Gujarat Assembly. PTI[/caption] “At the start of this (assembly) session (first after the December 2017 election) we (Congress) had not put up any candidate against the BJP’s candidate for the post of Speaker and he was elected unanimously,” Dhanani said. “However, the Speaker is acting like he is a member of the BJP. He is not allowing opposition members to speak in the House. He is suspending MLAs from the session at will. To save democracy, we have decided to move a no-confidence motion,” he said. Earlier in the day, 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. Dhanani said earlier too, the Speaker had suspended Congress MLAs. He also alleged that Congress members were not allowed to speak due to the BJP’s majority in the house. As per Rule 103 of the state Legislative Assembly, the motion can be taken up for voting in a week’s time after 14 days from the day of submission. The BJP has 99 MLAs while the Congress has 77 members in the Assembly.