Congress legislator Sherman Ali has raised question over the ‘neutrality’ of Assam Legislative Assembly Speaker Hendra Nath Goswami, after being suspended from the house on Friday.
Ali claimed that Goswami is not neutral and openly favours the ruling party. On Friday, Ali who is representing Baghbor constituency in Barpeta district had raised the issue of a broken bridge in his constituency.
He said that he didn’t get satisfactory reply from Parimal Suklabaidya, PWD minister and refused to sit. At this juncture, Speaker Goswami asked the marshals to take him away.
Later speaking to Northeast Now, Ali said, “The Speaker of Legislative Assembly should be absolutely unbiased. Sadly, this is not the case with the current Speaker. We can see him being very biased towards the ruling party.”
Regarding the issue which led to his expulsion from the party, he said, “In my constituency, there are four wooden bridges in dilapidated condition. On December 20, I wrote a letter to the Executive Engineer requesting him to repair these bridges at the earliest. However, nothing was done in this regard. Few people including children have been injured by falling from the bridge. I wrote another letter to the Engineer on January 17 but nothing was done.”
“I raised the issue on the floors of Assembly for the first time on February 9. Then, the minister said that they don’t have funds presently for repairing this bridge. On February 17, a person was going with his two buffaloes on the bridge and in an accident; both the buffaloes fell down and died. So, I raised the issue again on the floors today” he said.
“But the minister ridiculed the issue by saying that only an animal has died and he also said that the owner of the buffalo would be responsible for the death. I demanded a thorough enquiry into the incident and requested the Speaker to form a parliamentary committee for the same. But rather than doing so, he expelled me from the assembly,” Ali added.