Ruckus in House during zero hour

CHANDIGARH: Din marked the near one-and-a half-hour long zero hour proceedings in the Haryana Vidhan Sabha on Tuesday with opposition MLAs competing with each other to raise old as well as new issues of public importance to corner the ruling BJP government.

As the chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar reminded the Congress and INLD legislators to highlight current issues of public interest during the zero hour and speaker Kanwar Pal also endorsed Khattar’s view, the opposition alleged the government was unwilling to discuss the issues and “running away” from the debate.

Congress MLA Karan Singh Dalal said employees of different departments had hit the streets as the government was not sympathetic towards their demands.

“The government is raining lathis on employees, instead of listening to their problems. The government is crushing employees’ right to hold peaceful protests,” Dalal said.

Abhay Singh Chautala, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) member and leader of Opposition, accused the Khattar government of shielding “corrupt officials” and reinstating them in the posts from where they were suspended.He cited examples of how the government first suspended some officials for alleged corrupt practices and later re-instated them. He said: “This exposes the double standards of the government which claims to have zero tolerance towards corruption”. Din prevailed in the House when Chautala raised a two-year-old incident and alleged that a BJP MLA had allegedly abused a police official after he tried to book the legislator’s relative for triple-riding a motorcycle in Bahadurgarh.

Chautala sought to know from the chief minister what action was taken after an FIR was registered in April 2016 in connection with this incident. As the minister of state Manish Kumar Grover asked Chautala “not to threaten our MLA”, INLD members were up on their feet and pandemonium continued for a while. Chautala demanded reply from the chief minister, who said the MLA should have given an advance notice. “I am not expected to remember details of every FIR… There are FIRs against people from your party too, but I don’t know their details,” Khattar said.

The House again witnessed ruckus after INLD MLA Parminder Dhull and Congress MLA Dalal cornered the government, accusing it of not deputing officials or ministers to receive the Asiad medal winners of Haryana at the airport , the charge that the government denied. HTC