16 Tripura MLAs in Tripura always remained mum!

It came to fore when the study conducted by an NGO revealed that 16 MLAs of the outgoing 60-member Tripura Legislative Assembly neither raised any question during their five year term nor asked any supplementary. Another one Hari Charan Sarkar raised only one question during this five-year term.  Biswendu Bhattacharjee, co-coorditor of tiol Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms, the NGO that conducted the survey on the basis of the records available with the state assembly said all these idle members belongs to the ruling Left Front. 

Ratan Lal th, the former Congress MLA who recently joined BJP was the most active MLA of the out gong assembly who alone raised 1706 questions which is almost 42 per cent of the total 4032 questions raised during the five year term of the assembly.

He was followed by former CPI (M) MLA Samir Deb Sarkar who died last year and the Congress MLA Ashish Kumar Saha. They raised 488 and 240 questions respectively. 

The study further revealed that during the five-year term the Assembly had 15 sessions when it assembled for 73 days which was 78 days during the previous assembly. The seventh session was the longest when it seat for 12 days and the third one was the shortest when it seat for one day only. 

So far attendance is concerned, four MLAs — Prab Debbarma, Keshab Debbarma, Raj Kumar Choudhury and Lalit Debbarma — scored full attendance when the House was in session while the average attendance of the members in the House was 58 days.  

Bhattacharjee said it is a matter of concern that the number of days the House in session is gradually declining and the willingness among the members about participation in discussion are also reducing.

He expressed dissatisfaction that they wanted to expose some other matters too but the assembly authority failed to provide necessary information. ‘Our main motive was to place the records before the electors, so that, they themselves can assess the performance of the representatives they are electing.

Interestingly despite this dismal performance most of these idle members was re-nomited by their respective parties to contest the forthcoming election of the state assembly going to be held on February 18.