Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda on Tuesday smoothly sailed through a threat to his government by defeating an opposition sponsored no-confidence motion by 41-33 in the 81-member Assembly.
This was Koda's first major test in his 15-month rule at the head of the United Progressive Alliance coalition.
In his reply, Koda charged the leader of the opposition Arjun Munda with levelling baseless allegation during his address in support of the no-confidence motion.
"Only to defame me and the UPA government, the opposition and its leaders have been levelling charges sans any evidence," Koda said dismissing the Bharatiya Janata Party's charge that someone received mining patta illegally under his shadow.
Taking the fight to the opposition camp, the chief minsiter sought to know who owned Birsa Munda Transport, referring to one of the leaders in the opposition.
Responding to Munda's charge that the state government had been insensitive to the three crore people of the state, Koda accused the National Democratic Alliance of spreading ill-will among different sections of the society to disrupt social fabric during its six-year tenure.
He said the 15-month UPA rule had not witnessed a single case of rioting.
On the Congress setting January 15 as deadline to review support to the government on the one hand and lauding the Koda government's performance in the House, the chief minister said the 19-point memorandum issued by the Congress was a constructive one and all efforts were on to speed up development work.
"Apart from this, the UPA created 27,000 jobs and the state emerged third in the implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and first in the 20-point programme implementation in the country," Koda said.
Koda said though the Munda government had signed a memorandum of understanding with a plethora of investors, but none took off as the business houses were frustrated with the environment created by the NDA government.
"But we have made progress in this area. We have taken steps to revive sick industries. The government has given a revival package of Rs 806 crore to the Heavy Engineering Corporation," Koda said.
On Munda's charge that the ministers were corrupt, Koda said he and some of his Cabinet members had left the NDA government to form the UPA government after realising that the erstwhile regime had been 'deceiving' people and them as well.
"Now I am not alone. All my allies are unitedly backing us for development and social justice," Koda said on opposition charges that a certain ally of the UPA allegedly had a track record of pulling down governments.
Deputy Chief Minister Stephen Marandi attacked the opposition for allegedly creating social disharmony during its tenure and said the UPA government had put things on track.
After a marathon six-and-a-half-hour debate on the motion, the speaker took the division of votes.
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