Cong MLAs evicted from House on day 1 of Haryana Assembly session

Chandigarh, October 23

The first day of the Haryana Assembly session on Monday witnessed noisy scenes as members of the opposition Congress were evicted after they remained adamant on the demand for a debate on the shelving of the Dadupur-Nalvi canal scheme by the state government.

After the reading out of obituary resolutions, Congress MLAs, including former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Kiran Chowdhary and Randeep Singh Surjewala, sought a debate on the scrapping of the canal project, claiming that the decision would hit the farmers hard.

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Congress MLAs said they had brought an adjournment motion on the issue and demanded that a debate be held.

However, when the Speaker Kanwar Pal did not relent, all the Congress members trooped into the Well of the House, pressing for a discussion on the “burning issue”.

The Speaker, while trying to persuade the Congress MLAs to go back to their seats, said that he had accepted the adjournment motion and it would be taken up tomorrow.

The Congress members kept demanding an immediate discussion. The Speaker first ‘named’ all the Congress MLAs and then asked the watch and ward staff of the Assembly to evict them.

The Congress MLAs, while being taken out of the House, raised slogans against the BJP-led government in the state.

Later, talking to reporters, senior Congress leader and MLA Kuldeep Sharma said that once an adjournment motion is accepted in the House, it cannot be postponed.

“It should be taken up immediately. It seems the government was not ready for it, that is why it was postponed for tomorrow,” claimed Sharma.

Surjewala said the attitude of the BJP government in the state was “anti-peasant”.

“There is no provision in the law to return land acquired by the government for this project,” Surjewala, who is also national media in charge of the Indian National Congress, asserted.

Opposition parties had strongly condemned the Manohar Lal Khattar government’s decision to scrap the Dadupur-Nalvi canal project last month, saying that it would adversely impact the farmers of northern Haryana.

The Haryana Cabinet on September 27 had decided to scrap the Dadupur-Nalvi canal scheme after approving a proposal of Irrigation and Water Resources Department to denotify 1,019.2994 acres of land acquired for construction of the Dadupur-Nalvi Irrigation Scheme.

The decision to scrap the project was taken after the government found that this scheme was not “feasible”.

Earlier, when the proceedings of the House began with the reading out of obituary references, CLP leader and former minister Kiran Choudhary demanded the names of those, who died during in the violence following the conviction of Dera Sacha Sauda Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in a rape case on August 25, should be included in the obituary resolutions.

A total of 41 persons had died in Panchkula and Sirsa during the incidents of violence and arson.

To this, INLD leader and Leader of Opposition in the House, Abhay Chautala made a demand for inclusion of names of people who died during Jat stir in February last year.

“The names of those who died during the Dera violence and the Jat violence have been included in the obituary references,” said Speaker Kanwar Pal. PTI