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U.P. Assembly remembers them, but late

Special Correspondent

U.P. House pays tributes to its members, some of whom had died around 30 to 50 years ago

LUCKNOW: The Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha on Tuesday paid tributes to its members, some of whom had died around 30 to 50 years ago.

The gesture evoked a mixed response from senior members of the House. The Leader of the Opposition, Lalji Tandon, while appreciating the gesture of remembering the members so late in the day, however, observed that even the third generation of some of the former MLAs might not be alive in 50 years.

Stating that such a late reaction was no form of paying respect to the MLAs, Mr. Tandon said it amounted to insulting them. Pramod Tewari, the leader of the Congress Legislature Party, said that strict directives should be given to the District Magistrates on informing the Vidhan Sabha Speaker's office within 72 hours of the death of an MLA or former MLA.

Agreeing with the members' views, the Speaker, Mata Prasad Pandey, said the names of the former MLAs who had not been remembered in the House surfaced during the exercise of identifying the surviving members who were members of the first Vidhan Sabha from 1952 to 1957. Mr. Pandey said that 15 surviving members of the first House were found, including the 98-year-old Raja Ram Shukla or Raja Ram Kisan who was elected as a Congress MLA in 1952 from Rampur Khas, the constituency currently represented by Mr. Pramod Tewari.

The Speaker said the 15 surviving members of the first Vidhan Sabha would be honoured at a special function on August 25.

Tributes were paid to 18 MLAs: Raja Ram, Bashir Ahmed Malik, Chhittar Singh Niranjan, Suresh Prakash Singh, Balbhadra Praakash Shukla, Huva Ram, Abdul Rauf Khan, Rama Kant Mishra, Upendra Nath Dixit, Ram Krishna Verma, Ram Dev Mishra, Balchandra Sharma, Shripat Sahai, Anant Swaroop Singh, Saraswati Tewari, Puttu Lal, Om Prakash and Jang Bahadur Verma.

Of these, Mr Raja Ram died in 1958 and Mr Bashir Ahmed Malik in 1965. The rest passed away in the 1970s and 1980s.

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