Speaker urges all parties for co-operation

Speaker Biman Bandyopadhyay on Wednesday sought co-operation of all the legislators across party lines for smooth running of the Assembly.

The Assembly session, that commenced on Wednesday, will continue till March 10. Apart from different departmental Budgets, several important Bills like the one on clinical establishment and maintenance of old buildings in dilapidated conditions is slated to be tabled in the Assembly.

A meeting of the Business Advisory Committee with all parties was held on Wednesday. However, the Left Front and Congress MLAs boycotted the all party meeting. They had been boycotting the all party meetings since the Budget session. They had also boycotted the Budget session of the Assembly over suspension of the Leader of Opposition Abdul Mannan. They even boycotted the session when state Finance Minister Amit Mitra presented the Budget for 2017-18.

Meanwhile, the BJP and GJMM MLAs attended the all party meeting on Wednesday.

The West Bengal Agricultural Produce and Marketing (Amendment) Bill, 2017, West Bengal Municipal (Amendment) Bill 2017 and the Howrah Improvement (Amendment) Bill 2017 is expected to be placed on Thursday in the House.

CPI(M) MLA Anisur Rahaman raised an issue claiming that there was a delay in distribution of copies of the Bills slated to be tabled on Thursday to MLAs.

The Speaker told him that the copy of the Bills were circulated at the right time and there must have been some sort of co-ordination gap between him and other legislators of his party.