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Uproar in Madhya Pradesh Assembly over Indore riots

Staff Correspondent

Issue comes up in the House through a call attention notice

BHOPAL: There was an uproar followed by a walkout led by the Leader of the Opposition, Jamuna Devi, over the issue of recent riots in Indore, which was brought up for discussion in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly through a calling attention notice on Thursday.

When the issue was raised through a calling attention notice moved by Sajjan Singh Verma and Arif Aqueel, both Congress MLAs, and Samajwadi Party MLA Sunilam, many Opposition MLAs stood up protesting against Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan's absence from the House. The Speaker, Ishwardas Rohani, told the agitated members that the Chief Minister had gone to the hail-hit areas with his permission. This did not pacify the Congress MLAs and many of them even rushed to the well of the House.

Speaker

At this juncture, the Speaker repeatedly assured the members that he would ensure that the Government gave a reply to every query. Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Home, Nagendra Singh, had to thrice read out the two-page reply to the calling attention notice on the Speaker's

instructions as he could not be heard due to uproar and continuous interruption by Dr. Sunilam, who was trying to raise the issue of Sub-Inspector Chetna Sharma's alleged murder by another police officer in Bhind recently. At one juncture, Opposition leader Jamuna Devi even told the Speaker that Dr. Sunilam be removed from the House.

Participating in the discussion on the Indore riots, Congress MLA Sajjan Verma asked whether it would be possible to control the situation prevailing in Indore if the police continued to abdicate its responsibilities. The Home Minister refuted this by saying that only a few minor incidents had taken place in Indore and the police had acted promptly to tackle the situation. "Crimes have been registered and people were arrested," he added.

An observation by the Home Minister targeting the Opposition was even expunged by the Speaker, who said the Opposition had a role to play in democracy.

When the Congress MLA began reading out a long list of dates coinciding with riots a span of over three years, the Speaker told him to restrict himself to incidents that had occurred since the last Assembly session. When Mr. Aqueel was blaming the Government for its "failure" to control the situation, many Ministers were seen protesting.

Religion

At this stage, the Speaker asked the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Narottam Mishra to control the ruling party members.

The BJP members again started protesting when Mr. Aqueel alleged that there had been a series of riots in Indore as the ruling BJP was divided into two groups. The Home Minister responded to this by saying "there is complete unity in the BJP and it is not a divided house".

"We treat criminals as criminals and do not discriminate on the basis of religion when it comes to crime," he added. The Congress members named one "Golu" saying a case had been registered against him along with many others following the March 11 rioting but he had not been arrested so far. When this was verified by the Home Minister, many Congress MLAs led by Mr. Aqueel

rushed to the well of the House and began shouting slogans against the RSS. This was soon followed by a walkout led by Ms. Jamuna Devi.

When the Congress members returned to their seats, the two Congress MLAs who had raised this issue through the calling attention notice once again started raising queries, the Speaker tried to stop them saying that this was unprecedented. "What the two MLAs were now doing amounts to expressing no-confidence against the leader of Opposition." At this moment, Mr. Verma and Mr. Aqueel staged a walkout saying they were boycotting the proceedings for the entire day.

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Uproar in Madhya Pradesh Assembly over Indore riots

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