AHMEDABAD: The Congress legislators in Gujarat staged a walkout of the state assembly on Friday after the speaker of the House Nimaben Acharya suspended senior party leader and Una MLA, Punja Vansh, for 7 days for using unparliamentary words in the House.
During the question hour session on the third day of the budget session of the 14th Gujarat assembly, Congress legislator Harshad Ribadiya raised a query on the number of vacant posts at the animal hospitals located in Surendranagar. When Raghavji Patel, BJP minister for agriculture, was answering the question, Vansh countered him saying that the information being shared by him was not correct. To this, minister of state for home Harsh Sanghvi got up and tried to intervene. He was verbally confronted by Naushad Solanki, Congress MLA from Dasada.
Sanghvi replied to Solanki saying that the Congress will not succeed in their bullying tactics. Vansh, addressing Sanghvi, said that this was not his party office and used an unparliamentary word, which infuriated the members of the ruling party. On the speaker’s request, Punja Vansh later expressed regret over the use of the unparliamentary word. The word was expunged from the records by the speaker.
After the question hour was over, BJP whip, Pankaj Desai brought in a proposal to have Punja Vansh suspended for a period of 7 days. This was supported by the education minister, Jitu Vaghani, the former legislative affairs minister Pradeepsinh Jadeja as well as the former deputy chief minister Nitin Patel.
Responding to this, the deputy leader of the opposition, Shailesh Parmar, said, “When the member has expressed regret over his words, such proposals should be withdrawn and the ruling party should keep a broad approach towards it.”
2 bills were introduced in the House on Friday including one about an amendment to the Anti-Land Grabbing Act.
Another bill passed in the house on Friday was Gujarat Organic Agriculture University Amendment Bill that proposed the name change of the university.
