Speaker's Initiative a new agenda

Freeing Assam Assembly from Colonial hangover

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Sept 10: Assam Assembly Speaker Hitendra th Goswami has come out with something new to set the State House free from rules and procedures that reek of the Colonial Hangover. In such an exercise, he has introduced a new agenda – Speaker’s Initiative – in the House proceedings.

The State Assembly rules and procedures, including various government Acts, still look like as they were ected by the Britishers even as the ground reality have changed a lot. After independence the Assembly got rid of many rules and procedures that are not fit in the changed socio-economic situation in the State, but there are still a number of them. In order to bring about such changes, the Speaker had to a lot of ground work like visiting Parliament and studying procedures. ‘Speaker’s Initiative’ is the outcome of the Speaker’s ground work. Now in every Assembly session ‘Speaker’s Initiative’ will be a new agenda in the rule book of the State Assembly. For the first time in the history of the Assam Assembly, the House will discuss an issue on the ‘Speaker’s Initiative’ on September 12 when, barring the Question Hour, only this issue will be discussed. Other business of the House like Call Attention under Rule 301, 54 etc., Zero Hour etc., will be skipped. The first issue to have taken up by the Speaker under ‘Speaker’s Initiative’ is the ‘Socio-economic Condition of Tea Tribes in Assam’.        

Addressing the press on the issue on Sunday, Goswami said: “Some issues need detailed discussion as piecemeal discussion doesn’t serve any purpose. The issue of Tea Tribes is such an issue. Tea estates will also come up for discussion on this issue as Tea Tribes and tea estates are inseparable from each other. Members of the Treasury and Opposition benches will take part in the discussion on the issue, in the presence of bureaucrats concerned. The government will have to submit a comprehensive report on the issue discussed within 90 days, and the report will be made available each and every MLA.”

Goswami said he is going to interact with a number of people related to tea tribes and tea estates so as to take stock of the issue and the situation.

The Assam Assembly was set up at Shillong in 1937 and the first Speaker of the State was Babu Basanta Kumar Das.