PANAJI: Opposition Leader Chandrakant Kavlekar was briefly the trigger for a bout of laughter among lawmakers in the House during Wednesday's proceedings where Chief Minister Pramod Sawant won the floor test.
Kavlekar rose spontaneously but he seemed to have done it out-of-turn when the treasury benches were on their legs to record their 20 votes in favour of the confidence motion. It prompted Sawant to jokingly urge Kavlekar to remain standing, provoking a spell of hearty laughter.
But to be fair to the Opposition Leader, the joke wasn't in reality on him. It so happened that Michael Lobo, who is Deputy Speaker but had to officiate as Speaker following Sawant's elevation, inadvertently skipped the mandatory procedure of announcing the line 'the motion is before the House' after the Chief Minister had moved the one-line motion of confidence in his council of ministers.
No sooner Sawant had finished the formality of reading out the one-liner to move the confidence motion, Lobo skipped the ensuing procedure of making the announcement to specify that the motion "is before the House".
Lobo also skipped allowing a 'discussion' which permits lawmakers the opportunity to speak for or against the motion. It perhaps was the reason why Kavlekar found himself on the wrong foot, standing up in tandem with the treasury benches for the vote, without perhaps realising that his opportunity to speak on the motion was lost due to Lobo's faux pas.
Lobo jumped directly to the voting and counting process to declare the confidence vote carried by 20-15 making Wednesday's trust-vote a rare one in the annals of the Goa legislative assembly to have been pushed through without discussion on the motion.
