AITC walks out after being denied allocated time

Kolkata, July 24 (UNI) Opposition All India Trinamool Congress today staged a nosiy walk-out of the West Bengal Assembly barely half-an-hour before the end of the day's session.

AITC members walked out of the House just prior to the Health Mminister's reply to the demand of budgetary allocation to his department, protesting against the Speaker's refusal to allow more time to the Opposition for participating in the budget discussions.

Despite the Speaker's repeated pleas requesting them to return to the House, the AITC members refused to come back, Assembly shouted anti-government slogans and boycotted the proceedings for the rest of the day.

Later speaking to newsmen at the lobby, Opposition leader Partho Chatterjee of AITC, who was earlier asked by the Speaker to cut short his speech, said though the party was allocated 41 minutes by the Speaker for participating in the discussions as the largest opposition party, they were allowed only 35 minutes. But the Congress members, who were allocated 27 minutes, were given 36 minutes, violating the Parliamentary norms, he added.

In his own case, Mr Chatterjee said though he was allocated 13 minutes by the Speaker, he was cut short and asked to stop by the Speaker at around eight minutes. ''As a result I could not highlight all the problems about the health scenario of the state,'' Mr Chatterjee later told UNI.

However, despite the AITC's absence, the state health budget was passed through vioce votes with Health Minister Surya Kanta Mishra restricting his reply to the four-hour long budget to only ten minutes.

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