During the last five years, 11 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) and 6 Congress MLAs participated for less than five times in various discussions held in Gujarat Assembly, a report by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel said Friday.
While BJP MLA from Mandvi, Virendrasinh Jadeja and his party colleague Purshottam Solanki (Bhavnagar Rural) participated in just one discussion in the last five years of 14th Gujarat Assembly, others from the BJP including, Jawahar Chavda (Manavadar), Madhu Srivastav (Waghodia), participated twice in discussions during this period.
MLAs from Congress who was found having scant participation in the legislature was Mohammed Pirzada from Wankaner. Pirzada participated in just two discussions. Somabhai Patel who represented Limbdi till 2020 and resigned from the Congress was also found to have engaged in just two discussions.
Among the sitting cabinet ministers of Gujarat government, Arvind Raiyani who handles transport, civil aviation, tourism and pilgrimage was found to have participated in just three discussions in a five year period.
“This data is preliminary as the data for the 10th session of Gujarat assembly has not been made available,” said Pankti Jog, state coordinator for ADR.
Of the total MLAs in Gujarat Assembly, 36 per cent of MLAs participated in less than 10 discussions and 58 per cent participated in 11-50 discussions. Only 5 per cent MLAs participated in 100 per cent of the discussions.
Former deputy chief minister Nitin Patel participated in the highest number of discussions (191), followed by former Leader of Opposition Paresh Dhanani (139) and former education minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama (136). BJP MLA and former home minister Pradipsinh Jadeja (123), Congress MLA from Savarkundla Pratap Dudhat (104) and Congress MLA from Danilimda Shailesh Parmar (102) were among those who had the highest participation in state legislature.
In the last five years, 10 sessions of Gujarat Assembly were held during which the legislature functioned for 141 days.
“If the 10th session is taken into consideration, then Gujarat Assembly functioned for 28.2 days during one year. If we compare it with neighbouring states then the state legislature in Rajasthan functioned for 39.5 and Madhya Pradesh functioned for 30 days,” Jog added.
Questions asked in Assembly
Of the 38,121 starred questions asked in the Gujarat Assembly in the last five years, Gujarat government provided answers to only 2 per cent of these questions, states the report.
