Rajasthan: Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said on Monday that he had met with Prime Minister Modi.
Jaipur:
Rajasthan’s Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot meets with his cabinet a day after the governor returned his request for an assembly session from Friday with three conditions including 21 days notice and a coronavirus plan for the house.
On Monday, Governor Kalraj Mishra wrote to the Chief Minister that he was not against calling a meeting. “Raj Bhavan (Governor) gives the green light to convene the session of the Assembly bearing in mind the suggestions made,” he wrote, but listed the issues that needed to be dealt with first.
He asked if the Chief Minister wanted to hold a trust vote, because if that was the case, a 21-day notice was not required. “Do you want to present a motion of confidence? As it is not mentioned in the proposal but in public, you (Mr Gehlot) state that you wish to present a motion of confidence,” asked Mr Mishra.
The governor also said it would be difficult to call all MPs on short notice during the pandemic. “Can you consider giving MPs 21 days’ notice?” – asked his note.
His third question was how social distancing will be maintained during the session.
When he rejected Mr. Gehlot’s first proposal on Friday, the governor gave six reasons. He had said that the proposal did not mention an agenda or a date. He also pointed out that a case was pending before the Supreme Court.
To address the last point, the president of Rajasthan dropped a petition to the Supreme Court regarding his powers to disqualify rebel MPs.
President CP Joshi filed a petition with the Supreme Court last week to prevent the High Court from ruling on a petition by Sachin Pilot and 18 other Congressional rebels challenging disqualification notices sent by him. The Supreme Court refused to intervene, saying “the voice of dissent cannot be suppressed in a democracy”. The President had also contested that the High Court had told him to stay all action against the rebels until his verdict.
When the High Court took up the case the next day, it accepted a last-minute request from the Pilot team to include the center in its petition and again asked the President not to take action at this time.
The chief minister has been pushing for an assembly session since last week and protested for five hours at the governor’s residence last Friday.
Chief Minister Gehlot, facing a rebellion from his sacked deputy Sachin Pilot, believes he has the numbers to win a floor test in the assembly. The chief minister claims the support of 102 deputies, just one after the majority of 101 in the Rajasthan assembly, made up of 200 members. “Three rebel MPs are likely to return in the next two days,” Congress leader Randeep Surjewala said.
What could endanger the slim lead of the Gehlot government is the status of six deputies from the Bahujan Samaj (BSP) party which merged their party with Congress last year. The BSP petitioned the court against the merger yesterday. He also asked to become a party to a petition from a BJP MP.
