At a five-minute special session, the House adopted a resolution reinstating Choudhary Rakesh Singh Chaturvedi and Kalpana Parulekar, whose membership was terminated on July 18 for unruly behaviour with the chair for which they had expressed regret later.
"Today is a historic day in the parliamentary history of the country as the House will pass a resolution on the restoration of the membership of two Congress MLAs-- Choudhary Rakesh Singh Chaturvedi and Kalpana Parulekar," Speaker Ishwardas Rohani said.
The resolution moved by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Narottam Mishra was passed without any discussion.
The House was immediately adjourned sine die thereafter.
The Assembly will now inform the Election Commission about the restoration of the membership of the two MLAs and urge it to re-issue a notification saying that the two seats held by them, which had earlier been declared vacant, were now filled.
"We do not feel that whatever happened in the Assembly today deserves to be welcomed," Leader of the Opposition Ajay Singh told reporters even as Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan termed it as a "trend setter".
Singh slammed the ruling party for having expelled the MLAs without giving them a chance to put across their views and said the matter should have been referred to the Privileges Committee.
Maintaining that many options were available to the government, he said instead of taking recourse to anyone of those it had chosen the drastic step of terminating the membership of the MLAs. MORE
