Haryana Assembly Speaker Kanwar Pal today revoked the suspension of three Congress members who were suspended for six months from the Assembly in the Budget session held last March.
The decision to revoke the suspension came on the first day of the Monsoon session of Haryana Assembly after former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda accepted that the copies of Governor's address should not have been torn up, even as treasury and opposition benches exchanged barbs over this issue.
Three Congress MLAs, Kuldeep Sharma, Jagbir Singh Malik and Jaiveer Singh, were suspended for six months from the Assembly in the Budget session held in March for "disrupting the Governor's Address and tearing up its copies".
After the House proceedings began, the Congress MLA Randeep Singh Surjewala requested the Speaker to revoke the suspension of his party's three members.
INLD leader Jaswinder Sandhu also supported the demand and urged the Speaker to call back the suspended leaders.
However, BJP members including Gian Chand Gupta, Captain Abhimanyu and Anil Vij stressed that the members of the opposition party should know that the dignity of the House should be maintained at any cost.
"It is necessary to maintain the dignity of the House and the decision taken by the Speaker was right," said Gupta who is MLA from Panchkula.
Finance Minister Captain Abhimanyu said, "what Congress members did was wrong which is a serious matter."
The Speaker also justified the decision to suspend three MLAs. "If you feel they committed mistake then House can review the decision," he asked Surjewala.
Surjewala then said that "arrogance of majority" was not right and sought revocation of the suspension, saying that the three Congress members did not do anything wrong.
To this, Vij took a dig at Surjewala and said, "I am happy that my friends in Congress now understand the meaning of arrogance of numbers. They come to know this because of your (Speaker) experiment. There was a time (during previous regime) when we were not even allowed to stand in the House and we were even suspended while we were sitting."
Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar while speaking on this issue pointed out that democracy should not mean free for all.
"There are rules in the House which need to be followed. There should not be any disruption in the discussion on the Governor's address and we should stay away from setting up a tradition of tearing up the copies of Governor's address," said leader of the House.
However, Surjewala blamed the treasury benches for
snatching the right of suspended members from expressing themselves, which resulted in objection from BJP members.
The Speaker then asked Surjewala to explain whether tearing up the copies of Governor's address was right or wrong.
"We wanted protection from you (Speaker) when our members' right to express was being snatched and then they tore up the copies as they were angry on this," said Surjewala.
Then Hooda stood up and reminded the Speaker, without going into the detail, to enforce the decision which was taken in his chamber on the issue of suspension of three members.
The Speaker then pointed out that members came to the House without marking their presence.
"The impasse should now come to an end. It is right that Governor's address should not have been torn and we should not now go into the reasons behind the same," said Hooda.
The CM then urged the Speaker to call the suspended members back in the House.
After this, the Speaker revoked the suspension of three Congress members. The House was then adjourned till Monday.
