Dimapur, November 22 : In a strong reaction to the allegations made by the Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee which appeared in a section of local dailies on Tuesday, the chief whip of NPF Legislature Party, Kiyanilie Peseyie, termed the allegations as ridiculous “bordering on hilarity”.
Peseyie, in a communique, said issuance of whips to its party legislators on the eve of any Legislature/Parliamentary session is normal, especially when any Bill is to be introduced and passed in the House.
The Congress Party dubbed the NPF whip to its legislators as dictatorial and unprecedented.
“The fact that the Congress party has gone ballistic over a normal parliamentary practice using all sorts of colourful phrases that could only have emanated from someone who has an imaginative bent of mind but devoid of any understanding of actual parliamentary practices,” Peseyie stated. He also felt that it could just be possible that in the absence of any MLA to familiarise the Congress Party with rules and procedures of parliamentary functioning, the party functionaries let their imagination get the better of their reasoning and shot off their missives to the media.
For the information of the Congress party, Peseyie said, there are eight Independent MLAs in the present Assembly and not one as the Congress party seems to believe and added that all these Independent MLAs are part of the DAN Government because no one has withdrawn their support from the present Ministry or Leader of the House. “And if the Congress party thinks that proceedings of the Assembly are a “winking” business, it has another thinking coming: The affairs of the State and the Constitutional procedures are never carried out by anyone winking at any body, as the Congress party seems to believe,” he stated.
Peseyie also recalled that when Chief Minister TR Zeliang moved a confidence motion on February 5, 2015, all 59 members of the House, excluding the Speaker, had voted in his favour. “If there is anyone who is nervous, paranoid and have shivers running down their spines, it would be the Congress party which is now composed of a few handful political has-beens and wannabes whose political fortunes in the coming years are as bleak as a cloudy day,” he stated.
The NPF chief whip also reminded the Congress functionaries that the then Congress chief whip, on the eve of the February 5, 2015 Vote on Confidence Motion, had issued a whip directing all its legislators to vote in favour of the Motion moved by the Chief Minister. “Was this whip deemed as dictatorial or unprecedented by anyone then?” he asked.
“It is also absurd to say that the presence of large number of MLAs who extend unflinching support to the Leader of the House could ever take a toll on the Leader. Lack of support of legislators could make any Chief Minister in a democratic set such as ours uncomfortable, but whoever has heard of a Chief Minister enjoying the support of all the legislators in the House like the present Chief Minister TR Zeliang does, might as well say he or she is lying through the teeth!” he stated.
Peseyie further said he had recently pointed out to journalists that as the chief whip of the NPF Legislature Party, it is required that he issue whip as and when necessary to ensure that members of the NPF Legislature Party stand together on certain pertinent issues and to maintain discipline within the legislators of the party.
“The whip that I issue, however, is non-binding on non-NPF legislators. The Congress party too, would have issued whips if it could, provided it has any legislator in the House. Unfortunately, it does not,” he added.
Therefore, he said, the Congress party in Nagaland issuing whip is out of the question and the party should also be forgiven for not understanding what a whip is.
