In a major development that set the Opposition and ruling Maha Vikas Aghjadi (MVA) on a collision course, 12 BJP MLAs were suspended from the Maharashtra Assembly on Monday for a period of one year “abusing” and “misbehaving” with the presiding officer inside and outside the House.
The suspension of the 12 MLAs came after the Opposition created a ruckus over the OBC reservations issue and alleged that Speaker-in-Chair Bhaskar Jadhav did not give them enough time to speak.
The BJP MLAs, who were suspended from the Assembly for a year were Parag Alavani, Ram Satpute, Sanjay Kute, Ashish Shelar, Abhimanyu Pawar, Girish Mahajan, Atul Bhatkalkar, Harish Pimpale, Jayakumar Rawal, Yogesh Sagar, Narayan Kuche and Kirtikumar Bhangdiya.
Legislative Affairs Minister Anil Parab moved the motion seeking suspension of MLAs for “abusing” and “misbehaving” with the Speaker in-chair Bhaskar Jadhav. The House passed the resolution by a voice vote.
Denying the allegatiomns, leader of the Opposition Devendra Fadnavis told media persons outside the House: "These are false allegations. A story is being fabricated... No one from the BJP abused the chair or misbehaved with him...This is a false allegation and an attempt to reduce the numbers of opposition benches, because we exposed the government’s falsehood on the OBC quota in local bodies
"For OBC (Other Backward Castes) reservations, we are ready to sacrifice more than 12 MLAs," Fadnavis said.
Earlier, trouble broke out in the Assembly on the first day of a two-day monsoon session that began on Monday, as the MVA government sought to move a resolution seeking an empirical data on OBCs from the Centre.
Before senior Minister Chhagan Bhujbal spoke on the resolution seeking empirical data from the Centre, leader of the Opposition Devendra Fadnavis raised a point of order and charged that the Maharashtra government did not follow the Supreme Court directions for 15 months, which resulted in the scrapping of political reservation for OBCs.
Having said that he would allow Fadnavis to speak on the issue, Shiv Sena MLA Bhaskar Jadhav, who was the presiding officer in the Speakers’ chair, asked Bhujbal to read out the reply and present the resolution.
After he denied Fadnavis an opportunity to reply to the minister, agitated BJP MLAs rushed in front of his chair and banged the mike lying in front of the Speaker and also to lift the ceremonial mace in front of the Speaker’s chair.
Amid chaos and din, the chair adjourned the House for 10 minutes after the resolution was passed. The house was subsequently adjourned three times for 15 minutes and once for 30 minutes.
The war of words between escalated after the Speaker in-chair Bhaskar Jadhav told the media persons after the adjournments: " When I was inside the Deputy Speaker’s chamber, the Opposition leaders came there and abused me and used unparliamentarily language against me in front of Devendra Fadnavis and senior leader Chandrakant Patil. Some leaders even manhandled me".