The six-day monsoon session of Himachal Pradesh Assembly began on a stormy note here today with BJP MLAs staging a walkout alleging that Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh's reported remark against them was an "insult to democracy and the legislature".
The BJP members asked Speaker B B L Butail to give his ruling on the privilege motion they had moved against the chief minister.
They were referring to the reported statement of Singh about the BJP MLAs on August 4.
Amidst noisy scenes, the Speaker said he had received the notice and that the issue should not be raised in the House. As the Speaker tried to persuade the BJP members, they started raising slogans and staged a walkout.
BJP Chief Whip Suresh Bharadwaj claimed that "the chief minister has said barring two or three BJP members, others did not deserve to be in the House".
BJP chief spokesman Rajiv Bindal said Singh's remark was an "insult of the Assembly and the Constitution".
When the chief minister intervened and denied having made any such remark, leader of the opposition P K Dhumal hit back and said that "it has become a habit of the chief minister to make such statements ahead of the session and later backtrack".
Dhumal said that during the winter session, Singh talked about chopping off the fingers of MLAs, during the budget session he dubbed the BJP MLAs as "bonded labourers" and this time again he has made derogatory remarks.
When the chief minister claimed that he could never use such language against the MLAs and whatever has been published was "planted story", Dhumal said "there is a method in his madness".
Meanwhile, the House made obituary references to former MPs Bikram Singh and Vikram Mahajan and former MLAs Babu Ram Mandyal, Kuldeep Singh Chandel and Sita Ram, who died between the inter-session period.
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The lone Himachal Lokhit Party (HLP) MLA, Maheshwar
Singh, who merged his party with BJP on August 14, sat with BJP members in the House, raising the strength of the saffron party to 28 in the 68-member Assembly.
Maheshwar had informed the Speaker about the merger.
He floated HLP, along with other BJP dissidents ahead of Assembly polls in February. 2012 and contested the Assembly election after a gap of 27 years as HLP candidate.
Singh, a former state BJP chief, was member of the House from 1977 to 1985 and lost the Assembly election in 1985 from Kullu.
He was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1998 and 1999 and also remained a Rajya Sabha member.
