Pandemonium In Bengal House As Cong Seeks To Stall Proceedings

The West Bengal Assembly was plunged into bedlam for the second day yesterday with the opposition seeking to disrupt the proceedings, demanding a CBI inquiry into alleged financial irregularities in the personal ledger accounts (PLA).

Pandemonium broke out immediately after the House met when CLP leader Atish Sinhas plea for a point of order, seeking a statement of the Chief Minister on a CBI probe into the PLA irregularities, was turned down by the Speaker, H A Halim.

All the Congress members present rushed into the well of the House, climbed the Assembly reporters tables, thumped desks, whistled, bugled and banged metal bins in their bid to stall the proceedings, even as the ruling Left Front members exercised maximum restraint at the continuous gesticulations and provocations from the opposition benches.

At one point of time, a bunch of papers was rolled and hurled at the Speaker, who, however, carried on with the business and adjourned the House after the question and mention sessions, zero hour and passage of cooperation and information deparmental budgets in little more than an hour. The CLP leader, Atish Sinha, later told newspersons the Congress would continue with their form of agitational programmes till the chair conceded their demand. He asserted that the CLP would resort to direct action if the Speaker disallowed raising of the CBI inquiry on July three, when the Congress-sponsored no-trust motion against the Left Front government would be taken up in the House.

Election commissioner G V G Krishnamurthy watched the Assembly proceedings from the special gallery for about half an hour. He was with the states chief electoral officer, J Sarkar, and Assembly secretary N Khan.

The Congress members, including CLP chief whip Abdul Mannan, Saugata Roy, Pankaj Banerjee, Paresh Pal, Sobhandev Chattopadhyay and Ashok Dev, shouted anti-government slogans and charged the ruling Front of having plundered the treasuries.

Some Congress members carried an effigy of both West Bengal and Bihar chief ministers, as others shouted at the top of their voices amid whistling and bugling, demanding a government statement accounting for the alleged illegal transactions of the PLA.

Nothing was audible from the press gallery, as the ministers replies to questions and supplementaries, raised by the Front members, were drowned in the din.

The Left Front chief whip, Robin Mondal, had a tough time persuading Front legislators not to be provoked by the Congress members, who numbered about 50.

The home (police) minister, Buddhadev Bhattacharjee, power minister Sankar Sen, panchayat minister Suryakanta Mishra, and at least five other ministers were present in the House.