Assembly proceedings delayed by 90 minutes as only 17 MLAs turn up

Lack of quorum in the Legislative Assembly delayed the start of proceedings of the Lower House by one-and-a-half hours on Friday.

The House was scheduled to meet at 10 am. However, there were only six members in the Opposition benches including Leader of the Opposition Jagadish Shettar. There were 11 members in the treasury benches including ministers K R Ramesh Kumar, Ramalinga Reddy and Krishna Byre Gowda.

As per quorum norms, at least one tenth of the total 224 members (that is 23) should be present for the House to take up proceedings.

With election round the corner, the members seem to be more preoccupied with poll preparations rather than participating in the legislature business. Deputy Speaker N H Shivashankar Reddy, who was in the Chair, announced that ministers D K Shivakumar, Ramesh Jarkiholi, S S Mallikarjun, Santhosh Lad, U T Khader, Sharanpraskash Patil and Rudrappa Lamani had sought his permission for their absence. "If ministers are not interested, why should we conduct the House? One has to wait for one-and-a-half hours just to get the minimum members required for quorum. This is not a good development," Shettar said.
Ramesh Kumar agreed that there was no point in conducting the House just for the sake of it.