UP to honour 14 surviving ex-MLAs of first Assembly

Lucknow, Aug 24 (UNI) The Uttar Pradesh assembly would tomorrow honour 14 surviving ex-MLAs, including Uttaranchal chief minister Narain Dutt Tiwari, who were members of the first legislative assembly of Independent India between 1952-57.

In the presence of chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, assembly speaker Mata Prasad Pandey would accord a warm welcome to these members in the house. An appreciation letter would also be read out in their honour.

Coinciding with the honour of 14 MLAs, the UP assembly would also honour about 2200 ex-MLAs out of a total of 2900, on August 30. All the former MLAs would be presented with a potrait of the assembly, a shawl and a citation. The state assembly secretariat was spending Rs 5000 each for the potrait to be presented to the ex-MLAs.

Principal secretary (assembly) R P Pandey said here that all the 14 surviving legislators of the first assembly, including Mr Tiwari have assured their participation for tomorrow's function.

Mr Tiwari was also four time chief minister of Uttar Pradesh before Uttaranchal was carved out of it a few years ago.

''The speaker has talked to all the 14 MLAs separately to invite them for the occasion,'' Mr Pandey said.

The 14 surviving MLAs of the first assembly are: Kamal Ahmed( Lakhimpur Kheri), Karan Singh (Lakhimpur Kheri), Taj Pratap Singh(Hamirpur), Ramchandra Vikal(Bulandshahr), Veer Sen (Ghaziabad), Virendra Verma(Muzaffarnagar), Srinath Ram (Mau), Harish Chandra Asthana(Sitapur), Kalicharan( Farrukabad), Narain Dutt Tiwari( Nainital-- now in Uttranchal), Nageshwar Dwivedi (Jaunpur), Guru Prasad Singh (Sultanpur), Tula Ram Rawat(Lucknow) and Rajeswar Singh (Badaun).

Most of the 14 MLAs were from Congress. Virendra Verma later became the governor of Haryana. Ramchandra Vikal has the distinction of contesting several Lok Sabha elections against late prime minister Choudhury Charan Singh from the Baghpat seat.

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