Last session of Kerala Assembly ends

Thiruvananthapuram: The last session of the 13^th Kerala Assembly ended on Wednesday with a discordant note.

The Opposition had boycotted the sitting after the Speaker disallowed moving of an adjournment motion, and frequent disruptions of the proceedings by the Opposition had forced the government to cut short the session from 14 days to 11 days. The usual bonhomie of the last sitting was absent.

However, this session set two records—the longest Governor’s address (2:34 hrs) and longest Budget Speech (2:54 hrs). The House rushed through three bills reported by the Subject Committees without general discussion and passed them. The legislations were the Kerala Town and Country Planning Bill, Kerala Anganwadi Workers and Anganwadi Helpers Welfare Fund Bill and Kerala Land Tax (Amendment) Bill.

Just before the House was to adjourn sine die, Government Chief Whip Thomas Unniyadan informed the House that Member T. N. Pratapan was on hunger strike after he was manhandled by LDF workers last night. Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala assured the House that police was taking strong action against the attackers and urged Mr. Pratapan to end his hunger strike.

Moving the motion seeking adjournment of the House, the Chief Minister said UDF was going to polls with confidence. The government had obtained cooperation of all in the ruling Front during the past five years and they were going to fight the election unitedly.

Speaker N. Sakthan said that the 13^th Assembly, which was constituted on May 14, 2014, had 237 sittings till today. The proceedings took more than 1445 hours. Its first meeting was on June 1, 2011.

He said that during the five years, members had given notice regarding 143376 questions and 141387 were admitted. Ministers answered 679 starred questions orally on the floor of the House. Minister for Cooperation C. N. Balakrishnan had answered all questions addressed to him in time.

The House passed 144 Bills during its tenure including 33 original Bills, 58 amendment Bills and 53 finance Bills. Registration (Kerala Amendment) was reconsidered by the House and adopted after the President returned it. The Assembly permitted withdrawal of Code of Criminal Procedure (Kerala Amendment) Bill, 2008, and the Grants and Leases Modification of Rights (Amendment) Bill, 1999, on advice from the President.

He recalled that the House had received notice for 191 adjournment motions during the period and five were discussed.  Besides, 347 call attention notices and 2495 submissions were taken up by the House. Though 36 members had given notice for 100 private members’ Bills, permissions to introduce the Bills were sought only in respect of 64 Bills.  The House had discussed 10 non-official resolutions and adopted six.

The House had suspended seven members briefly for breach of code of conduct and reprimanded five. Six members were given warnings. One member (P. C. George) was disqualified on account of defection. Members were allowed to use laptops and ipads in the House and Webcasting of proceedings was started.

Mr. Sakthan noted that the Public Accounts Committee had submitted its 1000^th report (since the formation of the Legislature) during the tenure of the 13^th Assembly. The Committee on Environment had submitted action taken report on 26 reports of previous committees and eight reports of its own. Similarly, the Committee on Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes had submitted 44 reports including action taken reports on all reports of previous committees as well as the present committee. It was for the first time that two committees had submitted action taken reports on all its reports before the end of the tenure of the House.