Suspension of 3 Congress MLAs revoked by Haryana Speaker

CHANDIGARH: Haryana Assembly Speaker Kanwar Pal today revoked the suspension of three Congress members who were suspended for six months from the Assembly in the Budget session held last March.

The decision to revoke the suspension came on the first day of the Monsoon session of Haryana Assembly after former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda accepted that the copies of Governor's address should not have been torn up, even as treasury and opposition benches exchanged barbs over this issue.

Three Congress MLAs, Kuldeep Sharma, Jagbir Singh Malik and Jaiveer Singh, were suspended for six months from the Assembly in the Budget session held in March for "disrupting the Governor's Address and tearing up its copies".

After the House proceedings began, the Congress MLA Randeep Singh Surjewala requested the Speaker to revoke the suspension of his party's three members.

INLD leader Jaswinder Sandhu also supported the demand and urged the Speaker to call back the suspended leaders.

However, BJP members including Gian Chand Gupta, Captain Abhimanyu and Anil Vij stressed that the members of the opposition party should know that the dignity of the House should be maintained at any cost.

"It is necessary to maintain the dignity of the House and the decision taken by the Speaker was right," said Gupta who is MLA from Panchkula.

Finance Minister Captain Abhimanyu said, "what Congress members did was wrong which is a serious matter."

The Speaker also justified the decision to suspend three MLAs. "If you feel they committed mistake then House can review the decision," he asked Surjewala.

Surjewala then said that "arrogance of majority" was not right and sought revocation of the suspension, saying that the three Congress members did not do anything wrong.

To this, Vij took a dig at Surjewala and said, "I am happy that my friends in Congress now understand the meaning of arrogance of numbers. They come to know this because of your (Speaker) experiment. There was a time (during previous regime) when we were not even allowed to stand in the House and we were even suspended while we were sitting."

Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar while speaking on this issue pointed out that democracy should not mean free for all.

"There are rules in the House which need to be followed. There should not be any disruption in the discussion on the Governor's address and we should stay away from setting up a tradition of tearing up the copies of Governor's address," said leader of the House.