Devbrat Patnaik

Bhubaneswar: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress legislators have hit out at the Odisha government after Speaker SN Patro adjourned the winter session of the Odisha Assembly sine die on Thursday, 21 days ahead of schedule.

"Just because the government didn't find a place to hide its face over the issues raised in the Assembly, the session was adjourned sine die much ahead of schedule. This is unconstitutional. The government is acting as per its whims and fancies and doesn't value the interests of Odisha people. They have become insensitive and shameless," opined BJP deputy leader in Assembly, Bishnu Sethi.

"Good that the government is giving so much importance to the growth of Hockey, but at the same time, they are running away from the fact that onions have vanished from the plates of the Hockey players," added Sethi.

Of the workdays in Assembly, proceedings were disrupted on several occasions due to uproar by the Opposition over Lady PEO death case, centralised token system for farmers, land grab allegations against BJD MLA Pradeep Maharathy, the latest being the alleged lavish expenses from the state exchequer.

Condemning the early adjournment of the House, senior Congress MLA Narasingha Mishra said, “The government did not have any agenda to discuss and was not keen to take up the issues raised by the Opposition. As the ruling party has a majority in the House, the Speaker adjourned the Assembly by accepting a motion moved by the BJD MLAs. This is unfortunate."

However, responding to the allegations, Information and Public Relations Department Minister Raghunandan Das said, “The allegations of opposition parties are not based on facts. The Assembly functioned smoothly and was quite fruitful. As there was no pending official business to transact, it was adjourned as per the existing provisions."

This winter session had begun on November 13 and was scheduled to continue till December 19.

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