Perhaps the latest Budget Session was different from earlier lackluster sittings of the Nagaland Legislative Assembly (NLA). Issues of public importance were taken up and debated on the floor of the House. Credit must go the Speaker, all elected MLAs, the Opposition Leader and the Leader of the House, the Chief Minister. The highlight of the session was the discussion on the demand for a separate Frontier Nagaland State as put forth by the Eastern Nagaland People’s Organization (ENPO). Cutting across party lines, there was a strong conviction put forth by our elected representatives that the ENPO areas has been greatly neglected and it was a ‘collective failure’ of everyone, especially the successive governments in the State. At the end, the decision to reach out to the ENPO with one voice as announced by the Chief Minister is laudable. As already mentioned in this column, the demand for a separate Frontier Nagaland should be treated like the Naga political issue by our political parties i.e. to keep the ENPO demand above party politics as it is to do with an important question of peace, unity and integration. Hopefully the ‘strong sense of the House’ to reach out to the ENPO will not go in vain and all grievances can be addressed through dialogue and understanding. As the head of the government, the Chief Minister must give his personal attention to reach out and bring the ENPO leaders for dialogue.
As far as the other noteworthy issue—of 33% reservation for women in Municipalities, which was discussed as a matter of public importance, it is not only the government but the Opposition Congress party as well, which has done so many flip flop on this issue. Without going into the good and bad of the 33% women quota issue, our male political class should have been more honest in dealing with this particular issue over the last 5-6 years. After giving countless assurance to implement 33% reservation (by both the government and opposition), the tireless effort to come out with so many notification to reserve seats for women, all of a sudden recourse has been taken to seek a review through a Select Committee of the NLA. Why so late in the day when this could have been done 4-6 years back? Perhaps both the NPF and Nagaland Congress must apologize especially to the women. Remember they make up close to 50 % of the population. No party would want to risk losing support of women voters.
Coming to the planned 9 day long Budget Session of the NLA, which ended one day ahead of schedule, the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) was surprisingly tabled only on the last day of the sitting. The government of the day has escaped what could have been more scrutiny about the deficiencies as brought out by the CAG report. It is a fact that an Assembly session is the only time when the government of the day i.e. the political executive has to answer for its acts of commission and omission. With the Opposition raising issues of public importance and the presence of media in the House, the government faces greater public scrutiny during such sittings. Therefore the shorter the Assembly sessions are, the better it is for the government to escape public scrutiny. In Nagaland the practice is to have two such sessions in a year i.e. the minimal requirement to fulfill the constitutional obligation. And it is usually the case that the Budget Session is the most important with more days allocated. On the other hand, the other session, which is held sometime in September, can be even for one day only. All this raises the question as to whether our legislature has been reduced to that of a rubber stamp at the hands of the political executive. Let us hope that our Assembly can truly evolve into a platform for open democratic expressions.
