Bhubaneswar: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Sunday morning held a press conference here and accused the Odisha Legislative Assembly Speaker Surjya Narayan Patro of being biased.
Leader of Opposition Pradipta Kumar Naik said that the Opposition parties are not being given adequate time inside the House during Assembly Session to speak on important issues concerning the state.
Senior BJP MLA Jayanarayan Mishra alleged that the Speaker has not been allowing the saffron party leaders to speak on legitimate issues. He also said that the BJP has been planning to bring an impeachment motion against the Speaker with the support of Congress party.
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Mishra further added that if the Congress party extends its support to BJP and join hands with it, the saffron party will bring the impeachment motion against the Speaker.
Earlier, BJP MLAs continued their sit-on-dharna near Mahatma Gandhi statue here Saturday night protesting the suspension of three of their party colleagues from the Assembly for hurling slippers and other objects targeting the Speaker’s podium.
The saffron party lawmakers including a woman member Kusum Tete had their dinner and continued the dharna in the night, despite Speaker S N Patro himself coming down to request them to withdraw the agitation.
“We will sit on dharna the whole night under the open sky and will hold a press conference tomorrow. Our MLAs were suspended undemocratically by Speaker without giving them an opportunity to place their point of view,” Leader of Opposition PK Naik said.
Naik said though something unpleasant (hurling slippers) happened in the House, the Speaker should have given a hearing to the accused persons before announcing the suspension order. He said: “Yes Speaker himself came to request us to withdraw the agitation. But, I am surprised how come a Speaker acts at the direction of the ruling party.”
Referring to the slipper hurling incident, Naik said that the BJP MLAs were agitated when the Speaker did not allow the Leader of Opposition to speak on the bills which were passed in a hurry. “Now the Speaker says that it was a communication gap,” Naik said.
He said this act of speaker agitated the BJP members who have done something they should not do.
“Had they given us an opportunity, we would have tendered an apology. But, The Speaker did not give us any opportunity, either to speak in the House or to place our point of view after before announcing the suspension,” Naik said. He said let the people of Odisha see how the state Assembly is being run in a “partisan manner and not in a democratic procedure”.
PNN & Agencies