BHOPAL: The Congress members on Friday protested in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly over the Government's "failure" to give a proper reply to many of their queries and staged a walk-out.

The agitated Opposition members were on their feet during the question hour in the morning protesting against the Government's reply, "Information is being collected", in response to queries relating to several departments.

The Speaker, Ishwardas Rohani, intervened and tried to pacify the agitated members by asking them to provide details to enable him to take up the matter with the departments concerned. The Opposition members refused to concede and walked out. Outside the House, former State chief minister Digvijay Singh continued his tirade against the Shivraj Singh Chauhan Government for the second consecutive day.

On Thursday, he had started the debate on the Governor's address with the assertion that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government was trying to take credit for the policies and programmes that were started by him as chief minister. Addressing newspersons in the Assembly Press Room on Friday, Mr. Singh said the State BJP Government was least concerned about the welfare of the Scheduled Castes. He said the State Forest Department had failed to utilise the funds received during the current financial year from the Union Government for development of forest villages. He added that Rs. 15 lakhs was to be spent from this fund on each of the 1346 forest villages in the State.

Mr. Singh said the State Government did not have any policy for the Scheduled Tribes and this was stated by the State Government in a reply tabled in the Assembly. He said the Tribal Advisory Council, headed by the Chief Minister had not met even once in last two years. The Constitution requires that the policy for Scheduled Tribes be formulated after the TAC takes up for discussion various issues linked with the Scheduled Tribes, he said, adding that the State Government has neither framed a policy for Scheduled Tribes nor forwarded its suggestions to the Union Government on the Schedule Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, 2005.

Mr. Singh said the State Government had shifted away from the policy made for tribals on the basis of the Bhopal Declaration when he was the Chief Minister and contractors were now being engaged in the State for tendu leaf collection. To a query on the Rs. 700-crore inter-corporate deposit scam, linked with the Madhya Pradesh Industrial Development Corporation, Mr. Singh said that there was nothing irregular about the ICDs approved by MPSIDC. On the other hand, he said former Chief Minister Uma Bharti had gone out of her way to `favour' a nationalised bank by giving the State Government's guarantee for a multi-crore loan and allowed the ICD mechanism to be used to enable MPSIDC offset an old liability linked with the same bank.

He said this called for a probe that should be clubbed with the ICD-related investigations being conducted by the Economic Offences Wing of the State Government.

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