Dharamsala: Himachal Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Mukesh Agnihotri on Tuesday said the question raised by a BJP legislator in the Assembly “seems to be information sought under the Right to Information (RTI) Act as the reply was 250 pages long.”
Replying during a question-answer session to BJP member Lokender Singh’s four questions regarding the online bids invited and details of the earnest money paid by the Jal Shakti Department in his Anni constituency from April 1, 2023, till November 15, Agnihotri, who also holds the Irrigation and Public Health Department portfolio, said it was not an Assembly question but an information sought under an RTI Act.
“The question is either drafted by an XEN (Executive Engineer) or by a contractor. It is only XEN who can draft such detailed questions,” Agnihotri added.
The five-day Winter Session of the Assembly began in Dharamsala, the state’s winter capital in Kangra district, on Tuesday.
Holding a set of voluminous papers of the minister’s reply, the first-time member Lokender Singh, not satisfied with the written as well as verbal reply of the minister, asked Speaker Kuldeep Pathania to allow him to ask a supplementary question, but the latter turned the request down and allowed the House to proceed further.
In the 68-member Congress-ruled Assembly that got elected in December last year, 23 are first-timers — 14 of the Congress, eight of the BJP and one Independent.
Interestingly, when the Congress was in Opposition in Himachal Pradesh it used to say the RTI Act was a more potent tool for information on government departments than the question-answer session in the Assembly.
The Congress legislator, late GS Bali, had said in the Vidhan Sabha in 2011 during the question-answer session that “it’s easier to get detailed information through RTI rather than depend upon the government for reply to our queries. In the Vidhan Sabha we do not get such detailed information as we get through RTI.”
Then Congress legislator Mukesh Agnihotri, who is now in the Assembly for the fifth time, in the Opposition had said on the floor of the House that the “RTI gathers information more speedily than the Vidhan Sabha”.
(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at gulatiians@gmail.com)
–IANS