No-confidence motion in LS on August 8, PM to reply two days later
A date has been set for the no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha, with the debate to begin on August 8 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reply expected on August 10.
The attention now has moved to the crux of the arguments the two sides will put up to build their case, given the Opposition pushback on the Manipur issue and the PM refusal to bow to its demands to speak on it in Parliament.
BJP sources said the party is readying data that will highlight the long history of trouble in the Northeast, for most part of which the Congress controlled the region. The Opposition sees it as probably the last chance for it to “expose the fallacy” of the Modi government’s double-engine government argument, ahead of key state elections and 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
With numbers already stacked heavily in its favour, the BJP got a further boost Tuesday when the BJD announced that it would support the government on the motion. Earlier, the YSRCP – which like the BJD is not aligned with either the NDA or the INDIA bloc – had announced that it would vote against the motion.
While the majority mark to win or defeat the motion is 272, the NDA government has 331 MPs on its side, including 303 of its own. Add to that the YSRCP’s 22 and the BJD’s 12 MPs.