Upper House: Odisha forms 5-member team

Bhubaneswar: In its bid to set up a Vidhan Parishad in Odisha, the state government today announced names of members of the committee formed to study functioning of Legislative Councils in other states.

The committee will have three members from the ruling BJD and one each from opposition parties Congress and BJP, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Bikram Keshari Arukh said.

The five are Nrusingha Sahu, Pramila Mallick and Manohar Randhari (all BJD), Bhujbal Majhi (Congress) and Nitesh Gangdev (BJP).

The five-member panel along with the secretaries of the Odisha Assembly and the parliamentary affairs department will visit Maharashtra and Karnataka to study the functioning of the legislative councils there, Arukh said.

The committee is supposed to submit a report to the state government on the proposed Legislative Council in the state by the end of this month, he said.

The proposed Legislative Council in Odisha would have 49 members.

The state government initiated the exercise to set up a Legislative Council in Odisha after considering demands made by various organisations, Arukh had said last week.

Legislative Councils are there in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh.

The union cabinet has recently cleared a proposal of setting up a Legislative Council of Assam.