The first day of the monsoon session of the Assembly on Wednesday was a washout with the ruling BJD members creating ruckus over Mahanadi and Polavaram issues leading to adjournment of the House for the day.
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It said that the ruling party – with a brute majority of 117 members in the 147-seat House – was hell bent on not conceding any ground to the opposition to have their say and bring to fore issues concerning the people. Soon his party colleagues joined him and started shouting slogans.
When the House resumed, similar situation continued even as Leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra was allowed to speak.
The Congress members also rushed near the Speaker’s podium, shouting slogans against the state government. Without allowing the Leader of Opposition to speak, the Speaker again adjourned the Assembly for the day. Soon the House plunged into chaos.
With House being adjourned, the ruling BJD members including some ministers staged a dharna near the Mahatma Gandhi statue located on the premises of the Assembly. The agitated BJD members were demanding the scrapping of the Polavaram project in Andhra Pradesh, stoppage of construction of barrages by the Chhatisgarh government on the upstream of the Mahanadi and criticising the Union government for their support to both Andhra Pradesh and Chhatisgarh ignoring the interest of Odisha. “This is not acceptable as per law and practice of the House”, Mishra remarked.
The team included Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Minister Sanjay Das Burma, Energy Minister Pranab Prakash Das, Higher Education, Science & Technology Minister Pradeep Kumar Panigrahi, Deputy Government Chief Whip Rohit Pujari and various other BJD MLAs of different constituencies.
“The BJD MLAs, led by Byomkesh Ray, has shown disrespect to the national anthem at the behest of their party chief and chief minister Naveen Patnaik”, said Mr Mishra.
The Opposition alleged that the ruling party legislators showed disrespect to the national anthem by raising slogans just when the anthem was about to the played in the House. BJD’s Amar Prasad Satpathy also said that there should be no repeat of the dishonour to the National Anthem.
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“The Chief Minister was present all through when the unruly scenes were orchestrated and he did not intervene”.
