Modi faces first floor challenge tomorrow

NEW DELHI: The Lok Sabha will debate and vote on the opposition’s no-confidence motion against the Narendra Modi government on Friday, speaker Sumitra Mahajan said on Wednesday in a surprise move, setting the stage for the first no-trust vote on the floor of Parliament in 15 years .

On the first day of parliament’s monsoon session, the Speaker admitted a notice of no-confidence motion by Kesineni Srinivas, a member of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), an estranged ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (Bjp)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government.. A group of other opposition parties have supported the motion, but the arithmetic of the house offers a comfortable numerical edge to the government -- the BJP alone has 273 members in the house with an effective strength of 535 members, excluding the Speaker. Nine seats are vacant.

The motion for the debate will state, “This House expresses no confidence in the Council of Ministers”.

A ruling party leader said on condition of anonymity that the government wanted the no-confidence motion to be wrapped up quickly so that the remaining days of the monsoon session can be devoted to getting important bills passed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah, he said, also wanted to take the opposition by surprise by accepting the no-confidence challenge on day one. “We feel the opposition will have no issue to disrupt the house after the no-confidence is taken up,” a minister said.

In the house on Wednesday, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge demanded that his party, as the largest single opposition group, be allowed to move the no-confidence motion, but the Speaker declined, citing rules that the first mover, the TDP in this case, gets the chance. This will be the first no-confidence vote in Parliament since 2003, when the then-nda government, led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, sailed through a no-trust motion initiated by the Congress.

The TDP quit the NDA in March over the denial of so-called special category status to Andhra Pradesh which would have entitled the state, bifurcated in 2014 to carve out Telangana as India’s youngest and 29th state, to special central grants and other incentives.

The no-confidence motion has the support of the Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Samajwadi Party (SP), and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), a bitter rival of the TMC, among others.

(excluding speaker)