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Thursday, Jun 10, 2004

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National

Being misunderstood is our fate: Speaker

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JUNE 9. Echoes of the criticism of the Lok Sabha Speaker, Somnath Chatterjee, on Tuesday by Mamta Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress and Sushil Kumar Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party were heard in the Lok Sabha today during the election of the Deputy Speaker with two members of the National Democratic Alliance pleading with him to give the Opposition its due.

The first to bring it up was the Janata Dal (U) leader, Nitish Kumar, who — while felicitating the new Deputy Speaker, Charanjit Singh Atwal quoted — from Mr. Chatterjee's reply last Friday to the felicitations from members on his election as Speaker. He had then said: ``As a Leftist, as one belonging to the Left party, friends on my left may be rest assured that I have a natural leaning towards the Left.''

Having reminded the Speaker of this statement of his, Mr. Kumar said: ``The Opposition sits to your left in the House, but yesterday you did pay attention to us. I hope we will get our due consideration in future.'' Mr. Chatterjee, in turn, said that being misunderstood was the ``fate'' of the Speaker.

Minutes later, Ms. Banerjee — who was particularly vocal in her criticism of Mr. Chatterjee on Tuesday for allowing the Government to move the motion of thanks to the President's address despite the objections raised by the Opposition to the presence of ``charge-sheeted'' persons in the Union Council of Ministers — said: ``I request you to take care of the Opposition.'' Again the Speaker's response was a cryptic one-liner: ``I thank you for reminding me of my duty.''

While the Speaker took a benign view of the veiled criticism, the first-time member, Asaduddin Owaisi of the All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen said: ``I take objection to some members casting aspersions on the Chair.'' When Opposition members objected to this, Mr. Chatterjee stepped in — reminding them that Mr. Owaisi was a new member — and allowed him to continue. ``I was pained to hear such comments outside the House, and today the same is being said here,'' the first-timer said amid heckling by the Opposition benches.

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