More than 50 legislators of the Grand Alliance (GA) in Bihar shot off a no-confidence notice on Assembly Speaker and BJP leader Vijay Kumar Sinha soon after Nitish Kumar met the Governor on Tuesday and stepped down as the chief minister of the NDA government, former parliamentary affairs minister and JD(U) Vijay Kumar Chaudhary said on Wednesday.

“The notice signed by more than 50 MLAs was sent through email on Tuesday and a hard copy of the same was submitted to the assembly secretariat on Wednesday,” Chaudhary said, adding that it would be the first motion to be taken up by the House once it reassembles for the confidence motion of the new Grand Alliance government, to be headed by Nitish Kumar.

Janata Dal (United) leaders, party insiders said, swung into action after they learnt that the Speaker had hurriedly convened a meeting of the five-member ethics committee, headed by former minister and BJP member Ram Narayan Mandal, on Tuesday and got a fresh report submitted on the chaos in the Assembly during the enactment of the Special Armed Police Act in March last year.

“We got suspicious about the motive of the Speaker as he refused to go by the convention to resign from the post. He called an urgent meeting of the ethics committee and got a fresh report, which could lead to disqualification of scores of members of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Congress and the Left parties on the charges of indulging in violence in the Assembly in March 2021,” said a former minister, who is a JD(U) leader.

“The report was so devastating that it may lead to disqualification of a few members,” said RJD MLA Ram Vishun Singh, one of the five members of the committee who refused to sign it, citing factual flaws. “I wonder why the Speaker asked to submit a fresh report when the committee had submitted its final report in February this year,” Singh said.

A deputy secretary rank officer of the Assembly said he was asked to submit the report to the Speaker at his residential office on Wednesday morning.

“If the Speaker somehow manages to get the report laid on the floor of the House and approves the disqualification of members, whose numbers are said to have gone up to 32, amid a likely bedlam, it might be difficult for the Grand Alliance to prove its majority,” former Congress MLA Harkhu Jha said, adding that it would require a prolonged legal battle to restore the membership.

Jha further explained that since a no-confidence notice has been served to the Speaker now, any decision taken by him until disposal of the motion would be null and void.

Acting secretary of the Assembly, Pawan Kumar Pandey, said he had no information if Speaker Sinha had offered to resign from the post.

The Speaker did not respond to calls.

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