 "Congress members walk out of House on swine flu issue")
Enraged over state Health Minister Nitin Patel's remarks yesterday, that the Opposition might be feeling happy over the rising swine flu deaths, the Congress MLAs came wearing protection masks on face to the House to register their protest.
Assembly Speaker Vaju Vala objected to this and asked them to remove the masks as it was against the rules of the House. However, the Congress MLAs refused to budge from their stand over the issue and did not take off the masks. The death toll due to swine flu across Gujarat has reached around 125 this season.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Patel introduced a motion demanding that all the Congress MLAs violating rules of the House should be suspended for a day.
Following this, all the Congress MLAs led by Vaghela staged a walkout from the House.
However, prior to exiting from House, they appealed to the Speaker to suspend the question hour session and allow a debate on swine flu, as it was a much serious issue in the state interest.
Rejecting their demand, the Speaker said the House has already discussed the issue and there was no need to suspend the question hour session for a debate on it, and asked all the Congress MLAs to remove the masks.
To this, the agitated members of the Congress party, demanding a discussion on the issue, staged a walkout from the Assembly wearing the masks on their faces.
After the walkout by Congress, the Speaker asked the health minister to withdraw his motion to suspend the Congress members for a day. Patel withdrew the motion and question answer session resumed sans the Congress MLAs. Later, Vaghela told reporters that "Instead of taking action to contain the uncontrolled spread of swine flu across Gujarat, the state government was making low level allegation against the Congress."