PANAJI
The Pramod Sawant government has had the sailing arguably smooth in the Goa legislative assembly, which is entering into the third week of the monsoon session on Monday.
Bogging down the Opposition on the strength of its sheer 32 to seven numerical superiority in the House of 40, Sawant and his cabinet ministers have gone through the motions unscathed.
Nonetheless, there were some rough patches during the proceedings in the 10 days of business transacted by the House so far, when beligerant Opposition legislators, notably Opposition Leader, Yuri Alemao, Goa Forward Party chief Vijai Sardesai, Aam Aadmi Party's Venzy Viegas and Congress' Carlos Alvares-Ferreira, cornered individual ministers on some noteworthy issues.
Oppn checkmates Rane on pvt medical college
Health Minister Vishwajit Rane, for instance, faced the heat from the Opposition legislators over the allegedly below par functioning of the South Goa District Hospital and the government's plans to link the crucial healthcare institution in South Goa to a private medical college.
Alemao, Sardesai and Viegas slammed the move of the government to set up the medical college on a 10,000 square meter parcel of land and physically link it to the SGDH complex.
The Opposition MLAs called the move a sell out where public infrastructure built with taxpayer money will be served on a platter to the private party setting up the medical college.
In the end, however, the uproar from the Opposition did not result in the government yielding any ground and the proposal for the private medical college continues to be right up on the Sawant government's agenda.
Khaunte gets Vijai's stick
Another minister to be pushed to the wall by the Opposition was Tourism Minister Rohan Khaunte, over his ministry's junkets and huge spends on advertising and promotional events abroad.
Khaunte was particularly targeted by Sardesai over what the latter called "wasteful spending" in the guise of promoting Goa overseas.
At one point, the Fatorda legislator even alleged "commissions" being paid to counter which, Khaunte pulled out Sardesai's ghost from his past ministerial stint -- section 16B of the TCP Act.
Whooping power dues dock Dhavlikar
The pending energy arrears which long crossed the Rs 1,000-crore mark which the electricity department failed to recover from the defauliting consumers, was yet another issue that the Opposition leveraged to embarrass the government and Power Minister Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavlikar.
Alemao took the power minister on for the failure to recover the huge arrears but at the same time championing the hike in power tariff effected by the government last month.
Other Opposition MLAs also joined Alemao in turning the heat on Dhavlikar who however managed to wriggle out of the tight spot with details of projects initiated and being implemented by the department and arguing that the tariff hike was only marginal.
Sawant defends NEP, handling monsoon deluge
Sawant, meanwhile, has had a mixed outing thus far, fending off allegations from the Opposition of a hurried and unplanned implementation of NEP and the State administration's inept handling of the disruptions caused by the monsoon in July.
Ravi Naik's super-fast reply
Agriculture Minister Ravi Naik had members burst into laughter on Friday last when he stood to respond to the discussion on the demands for grants pertaining to his department.
In what will go down as the shortest reply by a minister, Naik first asked members whether he should respond to issues raised by each MLA or just make an overall reply speech.
When the unanimous choice of the members was the latter, Naik ended it with one stanza: "The government has the money and all the suggestions made by members will be implemented. So now, you (Opposition) withdraw the cut motions and support the demands of all my departments."
It triggered more laughter before Speaker Ramesh Tawardkar put the cut motions to a voice-vote defeat and then had the demands passed, again by a voice-vote to end the day's and week's proceedings.
