on 18th December 2015 students of Goa Multi-Faculty College Dharbandora along with Asst. Professor Miss Dhanashree Dessai were privileged to attend one day training workshop on “Rules of Procedureand conduct of Business of the Goa Legislative Assembly” as a part of preparation for the Student’s Parliament Competition organised Goa Legislature Secretariat, at Goa Legislative Assembly, Porvorim-Goa
Students and teachers from all across Goa had participated in this workshop. The workshop began at 11:00 a.m. with a formal introduction given by Secretary of Goa Legislative Forum Mr. Mohan Amshekar. They demonstrated the competition rules with the help of video record of college students who had participated in this competition last year. Through that video they explained the requirements of the competition, essentially about what is required to be done, how you are required to do, how to raise your question at the assembly. At that point the Panel members explained that when you want to raise the question you should first tell the number of the question and then accordingly the opposition party will give an answer to that question.
So Mr. Mohan sad that there are certain procedures required to be followed. He stated that the assembly is mainly divided into three business stages. So the first business stage is Question hour in which questions are raised by the opposition party and the MLA’s has to give the answers. He made a brief statement that before the assembly session, a day prior to the session all the questions are sent to all the MLA’s and Ministers. They also explained about three types of notices that are short notices, star notices and un-star notices. Short notices are given 3 days before, star notices are about the questions which are discussed in the assembly and un-starter notices are given in writing and the time limit for this discussion is only 20 minutes.
Then they explained about the seating arrangements. At the right hand side of the speaker the Chief Minister and all other Ministers will sit and at the left hand side all the opposition party Ministers will sit. After the question hour the next business of the assembly is zero hour stage in which no notice is given to the members. Only the major issues are raised in this zero hour. They also explained about the calling attention in which they have to give the notice a day before. Only the unexpected incidents, issues of serious natures are explained in the calling attention matters. These questions are to be answered by MLA’s and even Chief Minister can answer these questions.
At last they said that there should be 30 members in total for the competition and the time limit is one hour and if the time exceeds the marks will be deducted. They also said that the questions can be on current issues and even on the imaginary ones which will benefit the state and he told that the competition will be held on 20th January 2016. It was a very interactive workshop; we gained lot of knowledge on conduct of Goa Legislative Assembly.