Bihar Assembly: Nitish, Speaker spar in House over Lakhisarai probes

It all started when BJP MLA Sanjay Saraogi asked why no arrest has been made in any of the nine crime cases reported this January in which over 50 people have been killed in Lakhisarai. However, he didn’t get a satisfactory answer from minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav. Another BJP MLA named Arun Shanker asked whether the property of the accused were confiscated, if they were not arrested. When the minister couldn’t give a satisfactory response, the Speaker put the question on hold and gave the government two more days to reply.

CM Kumar, who had been watching the proceedings from his office in Vidhan Sabha, came to the House and questioned the Speaker’s decision to defer the reply on the Lakhisarai law and order question. A visibly upset CM almost raised his voice to say, “This is not the way the House is run. This is not as per constitutional norms. Any crime report is submitted to court, not to the House. Please do not exceed limits of (your) power and let every institution do its role. There is no point in raising the same issue over and over again. One can look for constitutional provisions”.

At this, the Speaker told the CM: “Aap hi bata dijiye House kaise chalate hai. Waise ki chalayenge (please let us know how tobrun the House, we would do so accordingly”. The Speaker gave a full version of the episode to the CM: “It is only after the minister Yadav could not reply on consfiscation of property status, there had been ruckus in the House thrice. Now that you have said the government does not protect or frame anyone, we believe in your zero tolerance policy on it.”

Sinha said it is the CM and others who had made him Speaker of the House and that when he visits his constituency, people would bring their problems before him.

A pacified CM said, “I would take up the matter personally today again and the investigation would be completed in a week.” The matter subsided after the CM’s assurance.

The trigger for Monday’s heated exchange of words between the CM and the Speaker is a February visit of the latter during Saraswati puja in his constituency Lakhisarai where some of his supporters were allegedly framed in false cases by local police. The Speaker had alleged that he got a cold response to his queries by local DSP and police station in-charge. The Speaker had later brought up the matter with state DGP who had assured action against those guilty (including police officers) within 15 days but no action was taken till expiry of the deadline. The BJP MLAs later brought up law and order problems in Lakhisarai. Opposition leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav had also said in Assembly last fortnight how even the Speaker’s words did not carry value for the government.