Govt in quandary over Speaker's post

| 05 February 2005 00:05 IST

The Congress-led ruling alliance is still undecided over what to take up first – election of the new speaker or the trust vote.

The state Assembly, divided into 18-18, has created a situation where any government that has its speaker, collapses.

The Parrikar government collapsed as it had only 17 against the ruling alliance of 18 while the speaker, the BJP legislator Vishwas Satarkar, could not vote.

Philip Neri Rodrigues, the deputy chief minister now, was physically lifted out of the House to have a tie so that the speaker could vote in favour of the Parrikar government.

Satarkar admitted while talking to the reporters today that he had passed the ad-interim relief, restraining Rodrigues from entering the House, before the trust vote was taken up.

As the speaker now plans to begin the hearing over Rodrigues’ disqualification petition from Monday, the three-day old ruling alliance would not be in a position to face the trust vote unless they replace the speaker, since Satarkar may simply disqualify Rodrigues and defeat the trust vote.

On the other hand, having their own speaker would reduce the number of the Congress-led ruling alliance to 17, which would invite collapse of their government.

“We have still not decided whether to take up the no confidence motions against the speaker and the deputy speaker before the trust vote”, AICC Margaret Alva told the journalists here yesterday, before leaving for Delhi.

In such a situation, the ruling alliance is left with only three options: 1- Win over United Goans Democratic Party legislator Mathany Saldhana, presently with the 17-memebr BJP, on their side; 2- reduce the BJP strength by making yet another legislator resign and accommodate him in the cabinet and get him elected at the by-election or 3- choose another ‘trusted’ BJP person as the speaker, who would resign from the party and function as per the diktats of the ruling alliance.

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