The Congress and Trinamool Congress members walked out from the Lok Sabha on Tuesday amid an uproar over the chopping of limbs of two Dalit men in Abohar district of Punjab.
The Bharatiya Janata Party members
protested when Speaker Sumitra Mahajan asked Congress leader
Jyotiraditya Scindia to speak after the question hour.
Referring to Congress members trooping
near the speaker’s podium during the question hour and raising slogans
against the Punjab government, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M.
Venkaiah Naidu said an attempt was being made to defame an elected
government.
He said the Congress members first abuse
an elected government by coming near the speaker’s podium and then seek
to raise the issue in the house.
“Everyday, it is becoming a practice. Please understand the sentiments of the house,” he said.
As Congress members raised slogans to
demand the dismissal of Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party
government in Punjab over the Abohar crime, Naidu said going by the same
logic even the Uttar Pradesh government needed to be dismissed over the
Dadri lynching incident.
Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said matters pertaining to the states should not be raised in the house and asked Scindia not to do so.
Scindia said there were several
incidents of atrocities against Dalits and women during the past 18
months since the Modi government came to power. “This is a national
issue,” he said.
As soon as Scindia referred to the
crushing of a school student by a bus allegedly belonging to a company
owned by an Akali leader and sought to blame the ruling party leadership
in Punjab, members from the treasury benches were up on their feet.
The speaker asked Scindia to sit down, as Congress members gradually gathered near the podium.
Minister of State for Parliamentary
Affairs Rajiv Pratap Rudy urged Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to allow his
cabinet colleague Harsimrat Kaur Badal, a Shiromani Akali Dal MP from
Bathinda, to speak.
Congress and Trinamool Congress members walked out of the house soon after Harsimrat Kaur began to speak.
Harsimrat Kaur, the minister for food
processing industries, said the Congress had been protesting in the Lok
Sabha after a court order in the National Herald case and accused it of
playing politics on issues concerning the Dalits.
She accused the Congress of trying to stall the country’s progress by stalling the Goods and Services Tax Bill.
She said Dalits formed a sizeable
section of the Punjab population and the state had the lowest rate of
crime against the weaker sections.
Harsimrat Kaur said an arrest has been made in the case and maintained that it was a result of a clash between two gangs.
Limbs of two men were chopped off on Saturday at a farmhouse owned by an Akali Dal leader in Punjab, as per media reports.
One of the men, Bheem Tank, died on way
to hospital after both his hands and legs were chopped off. Gurjant
Singh, who lost one hand, was admitted to a hospital in Amritsar in a
serious condition.
Source : IndianMediaBook - Current Affairs
