CM Raghubar Das had to present the annual State Budget virtually in front of the members of ruling parties only as almost all legislators of Opposition parties staged a walkout from the House following expulsion of legislators for wearing hangman’s hood in the House here on Tuesday. The Budget was presented in the presence of only two leaders of Opposition parties — CPI-ML’s (Liberation) Raj Kumar Yadav and Marxist Coordination Committee MLA Arup Chatterjee.
The situation arose after 11:30 am when the house was discussing important issues including reservation in JPSC preliminary examination and compensation to kin of deceased persons in Dumka road accident, JMM MLA Amit Mahto wore a hangman’s hood in protest of government’s response to the CS, DGP and ADG alleged corruption issue.
Ruling party legislator Neelkanth Singh Munda strongly opposed the move saying that wearing black caps in the House was demeaning the institution. He demanded action against the legislator from Speaker Dinesh Oraon. However, by the time several MLAs from Opposition parties put up the hood on their heads. The Speaker adjourned the House till 12 am.
As soon as the House reassembled after 20-minute break legislators of JMM, Congress and JVM came out in the well and started shouting slogans against the government saying — “Gundagardi Nahi chalegi…Gundagardi band karo (Stop hooliganism)”. By then almost all opposition MLAs had put up the hangman’s hood on their heads.
BJP MLAs Neelkanth Singh Munda and CP Singh rose against the move and asked the Speaker to punish the MLAs. Speaker Dinesh Oraon also requested Leader of Opposition Hemant Soren to stop his party leaders to demean the House but all his efforts went in vein. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Saryu Roy called for expulsion of the MLAs. “We have been watching several protests for the last five days but this way of protest is the worst. If this is not stopped here, we would witness dangerous situation in future. I demand expulsion of the MLAs for this act,” he said.
The Speaker immediately took action on the request and expelled all those legislators who had put up the hangman’s hood for the day. However, even those, including JMM’s Hemant Soren, who had not put the hood walked out of the House leaving just two opposition MLAs — Raj Kumar Yadav and Arup Chatterjee — to listen to CM’s budget speech.
Earlier, during the day both the ruling party and Opposition MLAs raised the issue of JPSC civil services examination and demanded postponement of JPSC mains examination scheduled on January 29. CM Raghubar Das said that rules of different states were being studied and action would be taken soon on this. However, the legislators strongly demanded to postpone the exam.