Sena BJP walks out against absence of CM, Dy CM for farewell

Mumbai, JulY 6 (UNI) Shiv Sena-BJP members today staged a walk out from the Maharashtra Legislative Council protesting against the absence of Chief Minister, Deputy Chief Minister and parliamentary affairs minister during farewell of 14 retiring members.

Trouble began when Revenue Minister Narayan Rane stood up to table the motion of farewell. The opposition members led by Nitin Gadkari, Leader of the opposition Pandurang Phundkar and Pramod Navalkar himself who was retiring after four stints in the council, expressed displeasure and anger over the absence of all of the three ministers.

''This is an insult of retiring members'', said Sena leader Navalkar who was also the member of legislative assembly from 1972 to 78.

''In this situation I would not like to have the farewell'', he added.

Chairman of the legislative council Shivajirao Deshmukh tried to convince the opposition saying that the farewell motion was to come up for discussion yesterday but was cancelled due to heavy rainfall. He also said both Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and his deputy R R Patil were pre-occupied as the adjournment motion was already tabled in the lower house. He said parliamentary affairs minister Harshwardhan Patil had informed him that he entrusted the responsibility to Mr Rane as he was also pre-occupied.

However this did not satisfy the opposition members who staged a walkout. Later, when Mr Rane started reading, the chairman adjourned the house for 15 minutes. When the house reassembled for the second time, the uproar continued which led to a second adjournment.

Later, Mr Patil himself came to the house and tabled the farewell motion which was supported by Gurunath Kulkarni (NCP) and later was passed in absentia of the opposition.

Out of the 14 retiring members, four have already been elected to the council for another term.

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