House witnesses uproar over SYL issue, corruption

CHANDIGARH: The Haryana assembly witnessed heated arguments on the issues pertaining to the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal and corruption between Opposition MLAs and treasury benches during the debate on governor’s address in the ongoing budget session here on Tuesday.

Heated arguments erupted within moments after leader of Opposition Abhay Chautala referred to former chief minister Devi Lal’s efforts and the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Kiran Choudhry countered it, saying it was actually former chief minister Bansi Lal who did the most.

While the former was Abhay’s grandfather, the latter was father-in-law of the Congress leader. Backed by several MLAs of their respective parties, both accused each other to be factually incorrect.

As the arguments seemed to reach a flashpoint, Abhay asked parliamentary affairs minister Ram Bilas Sharma, who was an MLA in the Haryana assembly during Devi Lal and Bansi Lal’s rules to clarify. Sharma said that it was true that Bansi Lal had done lot of the work for SYL, but Bansi Lal had himself credited Devi Lal for most of the SYL work in a session of the then House.

Sharma, however, subtly took a dig at both opposition parties, saying that it was interesting to see that unlike BJP, some parties were tense about their past and others, for their future.

He added that some parties were indulging in “organising events’’ and some others were not serious at all.

Here, Abhay was quick to turn the heat on BJP and said he was shocked to see that while INLD alone was fighting for the SYL canal, and even tried to dig it up on February 23, BJP MLAs tried to make fun of INLD by offering milk and jalebi (sweets) and vitamin B capsule to INLD workers and pegging their number to be “few” while they were “in lakhs”.

“Arre ye log to chocolate khaa ke paide hue hain, humne bajre ke rot khayen hain, hamen zarurat nahin inke doodh or inki jalebiyon ki (INLD workers grew

up tough, eating bajra roti . Wedo not need milk and jalebis from those who grew up eating chocolates),” Abhay Chautala said.

House was agog with uproar when Congress’ Jagbir Malik quoted some CAG reports and newspapers clippings to say that BJP had failed on all fronts and “corruption was rife”. He was backed by Kiran Choudhry and Congress MLAs Raghuvir Kadian and Anand Singh Dangi. Another party MLA, Lalit Nagar, flayed the government.