PANAJI
The Goa legislative Assembly which convened on Tuesday for a two-day session suffered a technical knock-out of sorts when it transacted business beyond time.
Technically, Tuesday's session was to be from 11.30 am to 1 pm. However, Governor P S Sreedharan Pillai, who delivered his address to the House began at 12.37 pm and his nearly two-hour speech overshot the 1 pm deadline.
Convention and rules required the Governor's address to be interrupted before 1 pm so that a motion is moved and passed to extend the day's session. The requirement skipped the collective wisdom of the House, legislature secretary Namrata Ulman included.
Pillai, meanwhile, continued with his address and went well beyond the 1 pm deadline and concluded beyond 2 pm whereafter the police band played the National Anthem and Pillai was escorted out of the House by Speaker, Ramesh Tawadkar, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and Digambar Kamat.
It was only when the Sawant-Kamat-Tawadkar trio returned back to the House after seeing off the Governor, that realisation dawned on the faux pas. It was then that Sawant moved the motion to extend the session of the House by two hours from 1 pm, approximately at 2.20 pm.
