Assembly Drama Goes on Unabated
Patna: Dec. 11, 2007
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Assembly Drama Goes on Unabated
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Photo by Shashi Uttam |
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High drama and grandstanding continued at Bihar Assembly on Tuesday when the opposition engaged in hurling accusations and insults at the ruling parties calling it a government diametrically opposed to the interests of the poor and dalits and embezzling fund meant for the scholarship for extremely backward castes students.
An emotionally charged Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) legislator Maheshwar Prasad Yadav said if his allegations about the irregularities in the scholarship fund in the Bakhri Panchayat in Muzaffarpur district were found to be untrue, he would resign from the Assembly membership in a matter of minutes.
Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi who tried to placate Yadav by saying that the government was going to investigate the allegations and one should not make a political issue out of a single, isolated case, was shouted down by the RJD leaders who continued to chant anti-NDA government slogans demanding a special commission to investigate the charges.
When Welfare Minister Rameshwar Paswan denied the charges of irregularities in scholarship fund, the entire opposition staged a walkout bringing the Assembly session to a halt.
Outside, the former Chief Minister and the leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly Rabri Devi parroted what she had been saying since losing power in the state nearly two years ago.
Corruption has crept in from the lowest level of the government to all the way to the top bureaucrats. We have farmers who are on the verge of financial disaster and the government is talking about creating a Greater Patna. This shows this is a fascist government and does not care about the poor and the dalits in the state," the former CM said.
Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and Communist Party of India (CPI) leaders, on the other hand, blamed the government for failing to check the black-marketing of fertilizer in Bihar.
"The Center has provided enough fertilizer for the entire farming community of Bihar but the government has kept them under its control only to sell them in the black market," said the LJP leaders.
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