Eight Opposition parties in a joint statement condemned the events that took place in the Patna Assembly on Tuesday, where Opposition members were brutally beaten up and dragged out of the State Assembly by the police, following chaotic scenes over the Bihar Armed Police Bill.
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP Manoj K. Jha had tried to raise this issue in the Rajya Sabha but Chairman Venkaiah Naidu did not allow him to speak.
“This is unprecedented. I have never heard about such an incident in 49 years of my political career that the police entered inside the State Assembly to drag out the legislators, including women members. This is crossing all democratic boundaries and making a mockery of our Constitutional system,” Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said, addressing a joint press conference.
In a joint statement signed by the RJD, the Congress, the Samajwadi PArty, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, the Trinamool Congress and the Shiv Sena, the Opposition said that the Bihar Armed Police Bill is an “insidious conspiracy to enforce a police raj in Bihar”. This law, the parties said, conferred unbridled powers upon the Bihar Military Police to conduct raids and arrests without warrants.
“This is an unconstitutional bill that effectively transforms the police force into an armed militia to harass, suppress and crackdown on academics, activists, journalists, the political opposition and all those who dare to speak truth to power,” the joint statement said.
The events in the Patna Assembly, the joint statement said, also indicated what the Bharatiya Janata Party wanted to do in the rest of the country “employing the sheer tyranny of power”.
