State lawmakers tour UK, Netherlands, France to learn about their Parliaments

MUMBAI: A delegation of nine legislators from the state, including one who had resigned over the Maratha agitation earlier this year, is on a three-nation tour to United Kingdom, Netherlands and France . This is the third such tour of state lawmakers in the past year-and-a-half, and the state legislature is estimated to have spent more than ₹75 lakh on these tours.

The nine-member delegation is led by Congress legislator and the head of the Public Accounts Committee, Gopaldas Agarwal. They began their tour on September 4. It will go on till September 12.

Abdul Sattar, the Congress MLA from Aurangabad who had resigned in July, in support of the Maratha agitation, is also part of the tour. So are Bhausaheb Kamble and Nitesh Rane (both Congress),rajesh Tope (NCP), Rajendra Patni (BJP), Satyajit Patil, Shambhuraje Desai and Ajay Chaudhari (all Shiv Sena), and two other officers. Agarwal and Sattar were also accompanied by their wives.

Seven of the nine lawmakers are members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Maharashtra legislature.

The speaker is yet to take a decision on Sattar’s resignation, which is likely to come when the winter session of the Assembly begins in November.

On Wednesday, the delegation visited the House of Lords and House of Commons in the United Kingdom, and held meetings with the presiding officers.

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