Speaker should heed governor's advice

IMPHAL, January 13: The former chief minister, Rishang Keishing has warned that a Constitutional crisis would result if the state Assembly Speaker, S Dhananjoy ignores the Governor's instructions to immediately reconvene the Assembly for long. Speaking to IFP over the telephone, the seasoned politician said he had no idea whether the Speaker's bulletin extending the adjourned Assembly session by another 20 days was issued before or after the Governor's advice was received. 'However, advice from the Constitutional head of the state has to be taken seriously by the Speaker,' he said. Rishang, while remarking that the Assembly session has been extended well beyond the normal, said a Constitutional crisis can be averted if the no-confidence motion admitted against the state government is disposed of promptly. The first session of the year should be convened thereafter, he said. Asked whether a Constitutional crisis, if one occurs, would be serious enough to merit imposition of President's Rule, he said President's Rule could have been imposed long ago as there are enough reasons, He said that the occurrence of a Constitutional crisis would be just one more reason for invoking Central rule. Regarding the Action Plan agreed between a state delegation led by chief minister W Nipamacha and Union home minister LK Advani on January 6 last, he said he did not consider the Action Plan to have been imposed by the Centre. He however noted that most of what is covered in the Action Plan are already state subjects, and said Nipamacha's proposing to the Union minister that the state government would perform what are already its duties amounted to a tacit admission that the government had not been performing at all earlier. It also amounted to a complete surrender to the Central government, he said.