Oppn walkout mars Bihar assembly’s special session

As soon as the house assembled for the day, opposition MLAs created an uproar demanding resignation of the Rabri Devi ministry over the recent massacres in the state.

Chanting slogans and waving placards, the members stormed into the well of the house and repeated requests by Speaker Sadanand Singh to allow the house to transact listed business fell on deaf ears.

"Narsanharon ki sarkar istifa do" (government which has failed to stop massacres resign) shouted the opposition MLAs and some of them even walked up to the podium forcing the chair to order the watch and ward staff to remove the placards.

The turmoil continued for ten minutes and order was restored only after the Speaker assured the MLAs that they would be allowed to speak after he had made his opening remarks.

Later, leader of opposition Sushil Kumar Modi strongly objected to clubbing of financial business of the government with the farewell of the MLAs from Jharkhand.

Modi charged the government with denying the MLAs their right to raise issues of recurring massacres and administrative failure by doing away with the practice of holding of the vital question hour during the session.

He demanded that the session be either extended by a week or curtailed to just one day to bid farewell to the MLAs of Jharkhand.

He also accused the government of trying to avoid the winter session by including financial business in the agenda as it would then not be binding on it to convene the next session within six months of the current session — a view which was echoed by the legislature groups of Samata Party, JD(U), CPI, CPI-ML and even RJD’s ally CPI-M.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ramchandra Purve sought to allay Modi’s fears and said the winter session would be convened next month.