Even last year BJP MLAs like Vikram Kuer shot into fame when he cornered the state government repeatedly in the House. Now BJP MLAs like Avinish Kumar Singh (Cheraya), Sanjay Tiger, Sanjay Sarawagi (Darbhanga) etc were seen repeatedly embarrassing the ministers. Sarawagi, in particular, forced the health minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey, to order a probe into a big purchase scam in Darbhanga Medical College Hospital.

The minister was initially reluctant but was rather compelled by the Speaker Uday Narayan Chaudhary to issue such an order. The Darbhanga MLA emerged as a tormentor to the health minister till the concluding day on Wednesday.

However, Janata Dal (United) MLA, Manjit Kumar Singh, also raised a serious question before sugarcane minister. But a close run down of the proceedings of the House suggests that it is the BJP MLAs who are asserting themselves and sometimes behaving like the opposition.

Very few Janata Dal (United) legislators dare to come out against the own government, obviously because of the over–presence of chief minister Nitish Kumar. Off the record many MLAs, once again especially of the BJP, are candid enough to criticize the state government.

In fact they are being compelled to do so as the situation has really gone bad. In the first term of the Nitish Kumar government the ruling alliance MLAs were not so vocal against their own government. The opposition was then not so weak as now.Apart from Choubey the ministers who faced the brunt of supplementary questions were cane development minister Awadhesh Prasad Kushwaha, mines and geology minister Satyadeo Narayan Arya and food and consumer protection minister Shyam Rajak.Though the Speaker Uday Narayan Choudhary is usually accommodative of government’s stance yet the aggressive treasury bench MLAs have forced the government to order high-level inquiries in several issues.

The NDA is facing the problem of plenty. Several of its MLAs have joined the ruling combine recently for their political survival and are not ideologically or any way affiliated with either the BJP or Janata Dal (United). Take the case of Vikram Kuer, who continued to be a Lalu loyalist till sometimes back. But since he has been repeteadly losing election he crossed over to the BJP and won on its ticket in 2010. Who can forget his anti-Nitish and anti-Sushil Modi stand in the past. Had he been made minister like Shyam Rajak he would have been silenced but since that is not the case, he is free to embarrass the government one way or the other.In the opposition bench the leader of Opposition, Abdul Bari Siddiqui, is perhaps the only old horse left in the House to lap up the opportunity created by the treasury bench MLAs.

The leader of four-member Congress Legislature Party, Sadanand Singh, a former Speaker, is another seasoned legislator. But his role as an opposition leader has come under cloud after he openly supported the Nitish government on the issue of Central University of Bihar. The tragedy with the opposition is that almost all the senior leaders and former ministers have lost.

The 22-MLA RJD has only a couple of former ministers like Lalit Yadav, Surendra Yadav etc in the House. Akhtar-ul-Iman, though never a minister, has the distinction of winning both the Assembly elections of 2005 and 2010. Samrat Chaudhary, son of former Minister, Shakuni Chaudhary, is another RJD legislator who is quite vocal on different issues.Apart from that a large number of them are novice or lack the capability to put up supplementary questions.

ut Siddiqui says his party has adopted a different tactics on the floor of the House. He said if the RJD or opposition MLAs vociferously support or raise any issue, the legislators of the ruling alliance would become defensive, and stop putting forward their points of view on different matters. They would not like to give space to the opposition. That is why they maintain a low profile.“I intervene during supplementary questions where I feel it is absolutely necessary, or when I feel that the government is deflecting the matter,” he was recently quoted in a daily.

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