Questions off House session
2 min readPatna: Members of Bihar Legislative Council can now ask questions to the government irrespective of the fact whether the House is in session or not.
Now, lawmakers can ask two questions each week from the government and they would get written replies from the department concerned.
This has become possible because of an initiative taken by Council acting chairman Harun Rashid who persuaded the lawmakers to make use of the initiative.
Rashid told The Telegraph: “In the rules of the House we have a provision regarding this but it was not being practised. I wrote letters to all the members of the House explaining the rule using which they could ask questions to the government even when the house is not in session. I also reminded the legislators about the initiative during the monsoon session of the state legislature.”
He said several members had started sending questions which were being forwarded to the departments concerned for detailed reply.
Rashid said the aim of the move was to allow lawmakers to raise questions on issues of public interest round-the-year instead of waiting for the legislature sessions, which are held for a limited period of time.
Terming the initiative of the active chairman a welcome step, JDU MLC Neeraj Kumar said: “I have already started sending questions of public importance. It has given me the liberty of getting written reply from the government on various issues otherwise one needed to visit the offices for procuring details.”
Neeraj said the council secretariat should also take steps for preparing a report card of legislators in which they should be ranked on the basis of number of questions they asked using this channel.
“Such a move would make the legislators more accountable towards the people,” reasoned the JDU MLC.
Courtesy: The Telegraph
