Did Mayem MLA Anant Shet file his nomination for the post of speaker even before he resigned from the post of deputy speaker? While no one has really given this much thought, it appears that Shet filed his resignation at deputy speaker a good four hours after he had filed his nomination for the post of speaker, which some experts have opined that this are grounds for his nomination to be disqualified.
The question is: Who will bell the cat? With the opposition quite happy that the erstwhile speaker Rajendra Arlekar is out of the chair and not seeking to antagonise Shet, who has by and large been lenient with the opposition’s trumpet band, not a word was raised on this technical detail.
Shet himself isn’t quite used to being in the chair but he is getting used to his new-found role with a roaring San Andre MLA waiting in the wings.
The road blockade to ‘save the coconut tree’ may have ended just as soon as it started. The briefness of the blockade, it seems, has come to the aid of a BJP legislator. Our sources tell us that the legislator in question had made up his mind to join the third front trio of Vijai Sardesai, Rohan Khaunte and Naresh Sawal, besides Aleixo Reginaldo, at the coconut tree road block and had hopped on to his two wheeler to join the protesters. You might wonder why we he chose a two wheeler when the legislator owns a big luxury car? It’s in order to help one find one’s way through the maze of traffic jam caused by the protesters.
Turns out even being on a two-wheeler hasn’t helped the legislator and even though he stays pretty close to where the protest was being held, he wasn’t able to make it on time.
Whether the twist of fate happened for the best or not, we are yet to know. What we do know is that the ruling legislator didn’t make it for the protest.
If only the protestors had chosen to block the road for a much longer time, much alike the three hour long BBSM road blockade led by Parrikar...
Leader of Opposition Pratapsingh Rane has been by and large subdued over the last four years that he has been in the chair. But there is something about this assembly session that seemed to spur Rane on. The usually reticent and stately Rane was animated at times and even ridiculed certain members of the treasury benches. If you’ve closely followed the assembly you wouldn’t need any hints on who managed to get under the old man’s skin. It left us wondering whether this was the long recessive warrior traits that were finally asserting themselves.
The longest serving MLA of the State and possibly the country, went to the extent of saying that it was only once before that the Goa Assembly had witnessed such animated exchanges.
Rane went to the extent of raising the issue towards the end of the session asking the members of the House to ‘set an example for the rest of the country’ with even the chief minister agreeing with him. These young and vocal legislators have certainly brought the ruling and opposition benches together, even if it is only on one issue.
Given the number of associations and organisation, it isn’t surprising that on any day, a number of meetings happen in Panaji, where a group of people express their unhappiness at the treatment meted out to them by the powers-that-be.
What makes our land different is people make almost no effort to make an event exclusive. There is such little security at most buildings “ government or private “ that even closed-door meetings can be walked into by almost anyone.
One such journalist was completely taken aback when a man came up to him and refused to identify himself or show his face hiding it behind this helmet. He tells the journalist that he often attends public anti-government events and that the journalist knows him. If it wasn’t Goa it would have been a scene straight out of an espionage thriller.
However, it turns out that the ‘top secret’ man was an intelligence gatherer of the CID department.
He could have easily walked into the meeting and known the whole story himself, and there would have been no one to stop him.
