Noisy scenes mars session, Opposition stages walkout in Raj Assembly

Jaipur, Feb 18 (UNI) The opening of the Budget session of Rajasthan Assembly was marred today by noisy scenes even as the opposition Congress staged a walk out during Governor Shilendra Kumar Singh's inaugural address.

As soon as the Governor entered the House to deliver his inaugural speech, several Congress members including Leader of the Opposition Hema Ram Chaudhary, senior members Ram Narian Chaudhary, Mahir Azad and Hemraj Meena stood up to oppose the government on various issues.

The members urged the Governor to listen to their issues which included ''violation of the 91st amendment of the Constitution'' in recent cabinet expansion, cold wave and ground frost related crop damages to farmers and ''deteriorating'' law and order situation.

This led to noisy scenes in the House. However, Mr Singh ignored the disturbances and continued to read out his speech.

Nothing could be heard in the din. This continued for sometime and ended with the walk out by the Congress members.

After reading out a few pages, the Governor sought the House's consent for exemption from reading out the full text citing health reasons.

Deputy Speaker Ram Narayan Vishnoi moved a motion to seek consent and the House granted it treating the speech as delivered.

After half an hour recess the House reassembled but unrelented Opposition members continued to protest.

C P Joshi of Congress said since the government had violated the ceiling of the number of ministers prescribed in the Constitution, hence, it was unconstitutional and the Governor's speech prepared by such government was also lacking constitutional sanctity. Therefore, this speech should not be tabled in the House.

Several of his party colleagues also joined him and this led to noisy scenes for over 15 minutes.

This was ended when Deputy Speaker Mr Vishnoi announced that nothing was being recorded and took up obituary referecne for departed leaders.

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