Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)
Bengaluru, Aug 9: During the first ever Assembly session after the new coalition government came into being in Karnataka, a total of 132 MLAs from the ruling and opposition parties never asked any question.
In the assembly, over a hundred are new faces. Umanath Kotian from Moodbidri, Poornima from Hiriyoor, Laxmi Hebbalkar from Belagavi rural, Rajashekhar Patil from Sedam, and Rajesh Naik from Bantwal are some of the newly elected representatives who have posed questions at the session. Most of the other legislators chose to remain dormant during the entire course of the assembly session. Not only this, they had no active participation even in the debate for vote of thanks to governor's address.
It is but natural to see newly elected members to show interest in the proceedings and remain active during the session at least to get noticed. In the first session, strangely, the ruling party legislators posed more questions than the opposition.
For the first time in the history of the state Assembly, the current Vidhana Sabha has the highest number of opposition legislators (104) and over a hundred new faces. In the first session which was held for ten days from July 2 and 13, an attendance of 90% was witnessed. But the active participation remained thin. During the entire session, 104 members chose to remain silent.
During the last five days of this session, question hour was provided and N A Haris from Congress and chief whip of the opposition V Sunil Kumar excelled by raising 20 questions each. Yashwantraya Gowda Patil of Congress and Appachchi Ranjan of BJP, who raised 19 questions each, stood second.
As many as 19 new legislators took part actively in the question-answer session. Umanath Kotian with 18 questions led the new faces in this sector. Rajesh Nayak, Basavaraj Mattimud, Halappa Achar and some other newly elected legislators have raised ten to 12 questions. Eight legislators raised only one question each.
Out of 104 opposition legislators, only 40 had questions to ask, against which out of ruling legislators, 53 raised questions.