Unruly scenes rock House; 15 INLD MLAs named

Pradeep Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 1

Unruly scenes were witnessed in the Vidhan Sabha today, resulting in the naming of 15 INLD MLAs for disrupting proceedings of the House.

The trouble arose when INLD members tropped into the well of the House after zero Hour when Leader of the Opposition Abhay Chautala asked Speaker Kanwar Pal Gujjar why only one of his calling-attention motions had been allowed while important ones, including on power tariff hike, land acquisition issue of Hisar villagers, law and order and the ban on agitation by government employees, had been disallowed.

Even as the INLD members indulged in sloganeering demanding a rollback of the power tariff hike, Gujjar tried to reason with them to resume their seats. However, against the backdrop of their defiance of the Chair, Gujjar named 15 party MLAs, excluding Abhay Chautala, asking them to leave the House. However, Abhay Chautala also later walked out of the House.

On the initiative of Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ram Bilas Sharma, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar asked the Speaker to ask both the INLD and the Congress members to return to the House. Except for Chautala and senior Congress member Karan Dalal, no other opposition members returned to the House leaving the field open for the Treasury Benches to do legislative business. As many as two calling-attention motions and five Bills were passed in the absence of the Opposition. Intervening at the fag end of the session, Khattar came down heavily on the Opposition asserting that it should not use the Vidhan Sabha as a political platform and take up developmental issues and speak on the redress of various problems faced by the people.

On the issue of the power tariff hike, the Chief Minister claimed that the power tariff hike had been made by the Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission (HERC). “After the last hike, the state government had made an appeal to the HERC as a result of which about 6.5 per cent power tariff was slashed in the state,” he asserted.

He claimed the Centre had launched the Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana to rescue the debt-ridden power utilities.

Abhay walks out

Even as the INLD members indulged in sloganeering demanding a rollback of the power tariff hike, Gujjar tried to reason with  them to resume their seats. However, against the backdrop of their defiance of the Chair, Gujjar named 15  party MLAs, excluding Abhay Chautala, asking them to leave the House. However, Abhay Chautala also later walked out of the House.