Bengaluru: In an embarrassing roll call for the government, only five Ministers were present in the Assembly on Monday when Speaker K B Koliwad called out their names to verify their presence in the House. Twelve other Mini-sters, including Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, T B Jayachandra, whose presence was required during question hour, were absent.
The Ministers’ presence came in for scrutiny when Mr C T Ravi of the Bharatiya Janata Party posed a question to Housing Minister, M Krishnappa, who had written to the Speaker authorising Water Resources Minister, M B Patil to answer on his behalf.
But Mr Visveshwar Hegde Kageri of the Bharatiya Janata Party interrupted Mr Patil’s reply to ask how Ministers could skip the Assembly, when it met in Belagavi for merely 10 days in a year.
Joining in, Mr Ravi argued that only the ministers concerned could fully answer the questions pertaining to their departments and not their substitutes.
When Mr Koliwad pointed out that Mr Krishnappa had taken his permission to be absent, Mr Kageri observed that only four Ministers were present in the House. Deciding to verify his claim, the Speaker did a roll call of the Ministers and found that only Ministers Kagodu Thimmappa, M B Patil, Mohan Kumari, Krishna Byre Gowda and Santhosh Lad were present and the list of absentees was much longer.
While the government was left embarrassed, BJP members thoroughly enjoyed the moment, likening it to high school class attendance.
Those absent in the House were Ministers, T B Jayachandra, Ramanath Rai, Ramalinga Reddy, D. K Shivakumar, Pramod Madwaraj, R V Deshpande, H K Patil, K J George, H C Mahadevappa, Basavaraj Rayareddy and S S Mallikarjun.
