Separate sitting arrangements made for 30 legislators
The pandemic of Covid-19 has forced the authorities worldover to adopt and evolve the work from home culture and depend more on online meetings but it appears that these practices have not found favour with the members of Uttarakhand legislative assembly.
Taking a cue from the parliament which adopted the virtual attendance system of MPs during the monsoon session to overcome the hurdle of Covid-19 pandemic, the Uttarakhand assembly also gave the option of online attendance to its members in the one day session held on September 23. A total of 24 members had then attended the session online that time. However when the assembly secretariat tried to get the feedback of online attendance for the upcoming winter session of the assembly almost all of them were in favour of attending assembly physically. It is worth mentioning here that the assembly hall of Uttarakhand can accommodate only 29 members out of 71 members (70 elected, one nominated) if the seating arrangement is made as per the Covid-19 protocol. To accommodate the members who had clearly shown their reluctance to attend the online session, the assembly secretariat has merged three rooms in newly constructed Prakash Pant building and gave it a shape of a big hall. Here arrangements for accommodating 30 members for the three day long sessions are being done at a frantic pace. In this hall screens and audio-visual systems are being installed and seats of MLAs are being placed. It is interesting to note that though these 30 members would attend the session in a virtual mode only but since they would be present physically inside the assembly building, they would be technically considered attending the session physically.
The speaker of Uttarakhand assembly Premchand Agarwal accepted that almost all of the members contacted expressed reluctance to attend the session virtually. He said that 29 members would sit in the main hall, 11 in galleries and 30 in the hall number 107. He said that the members would be allowed to sit in the main building (Hall and galleries) on a first come first serve basis. It means that the late arrivals would have to attend the proceedings from the Prakash Pant building.
Wednesday, 16 December 2020 | PNS | Dehradun
