CHANDIGARH, July 28: Haryana Vidhan Sabha today witnessed acrimonious scenes, culminating into two symbolic walk-outs by members of Haryana Lok Dal (HLD) after the Speaker disallowed supplementaries on a question and stopped their leader, Om Parkash Chautala from speaking on an old case of contempt of court against the Chief Minister, Bansi Lal.The Treasury benches and the HLD members clashed during the Zero Hour when Chautala said that Bansi Lal and his counsel, Hans Raj Bhardwaj, were found guilty of contempt of court in a suo motu action by Punjab and Haryana High Court in 1978. Immediately, Bansi Lal stood up to deny the charge. ``The two of us were discharged by the court,'' he insisted.However, the HLD leader said the Chief Minister was forgetting that the two were held guilty by a five-member bench of the High Court on charges of contempt. The discharge order was issued by only three of the five judges after Bansi Lal and his counsel apologised, he said flaunting a copy of the High Court judgment.The statement sparked off loud protests from the Treasury benches, with members blaming the Chautala clan for Meham incidents. When Agriculture Minister, Karan Singh Dalal alleged that Chautala's son was responsible for the killing of a young policeman in Meham, Chautala retaliated by daring the government to take action. The Chief Minister intervened and wanted to know as to why the HLD leader was making such a big issue out of a contempt case when he himself was indicted on charges of theft of watches.However, even as Chautala got up to respond, the Speaker denied him permission to say anything further on the matter. Immediately, Chautala and other HLD members staged a walk-out in protest. Earlier, the HLD members had staged a walk-out during the Question Hour when they were not satisfied with the reply by Haryana Education Minister, Ram Bilas Sharma on closure of an evening college of Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak.In response to the question from HLD's Ram Pal Majra, Sharma said the university had constituted a committee of experts and experienced teachers to examine the financial viability of the evening college. The closure was effected only after the panel recommended that there was no rationale to continue with the evening college at a huge cost, he said.The HLD members wanted to know about the students affected by its closure but were not satisfied with the response of the Minister. However, the Speaker disallowed any further supplementaries. The HLD members walked-out of the House to protest against the ruling.Later, noisy scenes were witnessed when the Assembly discussed the issue of change in the status of Guru Jambashwar University from an affiliating University to that of a residential university. While the HLD member, Sampat Singh accused the government of effecting the changes on ``political grounds'', the Education Minister denied the charge. He said the government was giving continued support to the university in the form of grants.
