‘We walked out 8 times for not being heard’

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 11

The opposition BJP today lashed out at the AAP government charging the latter of running away from its responsibility of discussion in the House on important public issues for raising which the Opposition was marshalled out five times while it was forced to walk out eight times for “not being heard”.

To add, Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta pointed out the Kejriwal government’s failure to bring even a single legislation in the Assembly during the Budget Session, one of the longest sessions, reflecting its “casual attitude”.

A day after one of the longest sessions of the Delhi Legislative Assembly ended Gupta said the government tried hard to suppress the voice of the Opposition for seeking discussions on unavailability of clean drinking water in the slums and absence of basic amenities to JJ dwellers.

In place of coming out with financial assistance to MCD safai karamcharies, the government once again chose to shed crocodile tears on their miserable conditions, Gupta stated.

He claimed that the government could not ensure a fair debate on budget with the Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal, remaining absent for most of the duration. “He (Kejriwal) was not there when the issue of the DJB was to be taken up. The CM, Deputy CM, ministers and AAP MLAs exhibited most undemocratic and irresponsible behaviour and used the most undignified language,” said Gupta.

“The repressive government went out of the way to suppress freedom of press by sending the matter of one Hindi newspaper to the Privilege Committee for the so called “misreporting”. Whenever BJP MLAs tried to raise public issues, they were forced out of the House with the help of marshals. When they resisted and pressed for discussion they were not heard. Hence, they had no option but to walk out of the House eight times,” Gupta said.

Despite all this, Gupta said the opposition succeeded in raising 225 issues of public importance, such as shortage of water, collapse of sewerage system in many areas, failure to check pollution, failure of ration system, shortcomings in door step delivery of ration items, inability to provide one stop delivery of women victims of domestic violence and rape, under various rules of the Assembly.