Kolkata: Proposal of forming West Bengal Legislative Council was passed in Assembly on Tuesday with 196 MLAs voting in favour of it and 69 MLAs voting against it.
Opposing the forming of Legislative Council, Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari said that passing of bills doesn’t mean forming of the council.
“There is no logic behind forming a Legislative Council. There is no legal status in the Legislative Council. People are jobless now especially due to the pandemic, instead of attending them the TMC is spending money for forming the council. Just because the TMC wants to bring the defeated candidate TMC wants to form the Upper House,” mentioned Suvendu also mentioning that if the Upper House is formed then passing of bills in the Assembly will be time consuming.
Trinamool Congress’ secretary general Partha Chattopadhyay said that not just TMC leaders, people from all walks of life will be inducted in the Upper House.
“I don’t know why the BJP is opposing the formation of council? Last year a committee was made and I was heading the committee where the proposal of Upper House was discussed which was placed before House today,” stated Partha.
Notably, only six states Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra have Legislative Council or Upper House.
West Bengal has 294 Assembly seats and West Bengal can have 98 members in the legislative council as the strength of Legislative Council cannot be more than one-third of total Assembly seats.
It is pertinent to mention that Mamata Banerjee who herself had lost the Nandigram seat to BJPs Suvendu Adhikari have inducted Amit Mitra as Finance Minister even without contesting the polls and since members of Legislative Council can become ministers chances are there that Amit Mitra can be shifter to Legislative Council or Upper House.
Legislative Council was started in Bengal by Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy in 1952 which was active till 1969 and the last Legislative Council in West Bengal had 73 members.
