NPF to boycott Nagaland Legislative Assembly monsoon session

Dimapur, Aug. 12 (EMN): The Naga People’s Front (NPF) Legislature Party announced on Wednesday that it would boycott the sixth session of the 13th Nagaland Legislative Assembly (NLA), which will be held today, over failure of the government to extend the business session to three days.

The NLA monsoon session was supposed to be held on July 30 but was deferred to August 13 after six of their staff were detected with the Covid-19. The business session was reduced to one day as a measure to contain the spread Covid-19, which the opposition party had contended as “unfair”.

In a letter to the NLA Speaker, the NPF Legislature Party stated that the declaration of one-day session following the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) meeting on July 20, as mentioned in his letter to the governor of Nagaland, was “factual” but he failed to mention that two NPF MLAs -- Dr. Chotisuh Sazo and Sh Amenba Yaden – had requested to extend the session to three days, which was turned down.

Stating that the two legislators had termed the decision taken at BAC meeting as “discriminatory, unfair and unacceptable”, it said “portraying the two NPF MLAs as being a party to the decision to hold a one-day session as per your letter to the Hon’ble Governor is one-sided and lacks precision”.

The letter went on to remind opposition leader TR Zeliang’s letter to the governor, proposing extension of business session to three days – allotting a day each for matters related to Naga political issue, Covid-19 and Sarfaesi Act, 2002. It also said the speaker stood by the decision to have a one-day session though the governor indicated that it should “be of adequate duration to enable it to deliberate over the pressing issues of Nagaland”.

It stated that the spokesperson of NPF Legislature Party had served notice for adjournment motion two weeks prior to the scheduled date of Assembly session but it went “unattended”.

“Furthermore, Opposition MLAs had filed 29 questions to be answered during the 6th Session of the 13th NLA but only 12 questions were accepted by the Assembly Secretariat while the time duration allotted to the Opposition Bench for discussion on matters related to Covid-19 was a mere 35 minutes which by all standard is insufficient,” the letter read.

“Your authority is reminded that the dignity of the NLA and its democratic principles have been repeatedly abused on the pretext of implementing Covid-19 measures and in order to protect democratic practices and to maintain the sanctity of the NLA, the Opposition Party will boycott the one-day session to be held on August 13, 2020 which has been convened for mere fulfilment of constitutional obligation,” it added.