Congress MLAs continue boycott

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 22

Firm on not attending the Assembly proceedings till the suspension of three Congress members is revoked, the Congress today boycotted the House again and staged a dharna outside Vidhan Sabha.

With former CM Bhupinder Hooda and AICC spokesperson Randeep Surjewala leaving for Delhi today, the other Congress MLAs, including CLP leader Kiran Choudhry, staged a dharna outside the assembly.

“The BJP government is deliberately keeping us away from the House because its leaders know that the questions we ask will embarrass them,” alleged Choudhry.

She asserted the government had failed miserably in safeguarding the interests of farmers on the SYL issue with Punjab. Farmers had not been given adequate relief for the damage to their crops due to whitefly and all sections of the society are fed up with its functioning, she added. To add insult to injury, the Budget presented yesterday showed an additional debt of Rs59,000 crore, the CLP leader said.

Former Speaker Kuldeep Sharma, who along with two others — Jaiveer Singh and Jagbir Malik — were suspended by the Speaker for six months for tearing copies of Governor’s Address, said he owned his act, but that was not to show disrespect to the Governor but symbolised his protest against the government.

He said the Governor was not in the House when he did it and he only wanted to convey that what did the Address meant when the government had failed miserably on all fronts.

“When MLA Gian Chand Gupta came to the Speaker’s chair and adjourned the House, was it not contempt of the chair?” he said. The former Speaker said this perhaps was the first time that members of a House had been precluded from attending even obituary references in an Assembly.