The second day of the monsoon and probably the last session of the current Government witnessed the rare incident, when two independent MlAs from ludhiana — Simarjit Singh Bains and Balwinder Singh Bains — were thrown out of the House.
The two MlAs, popularly known as Bains brothers who a day before announced a new party ‘Awaaz-e-Punjab’ along with former parliamentarian Navjot Singh Sidhu and SAD’s “rebel” MlA Pargat Singh, were pushed out of the House by the marshalls after the Speaker Charanjeet Singh Atwal refused to accept a Private Member Bill proposed by them.
The orders came when Simarjit Bains pressed for a reply from the Speaker for denying the Private Bill brought by him that proposed sending bill to Rajasthan for charges of water being given from the State rivers since 1965.
As Atwal disallowed Simarjit to raise objection and asked the Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to speak, he refused to get back to his seat and insisted for a reply from the Speaker.
Even as the Speaker repeatedly named Simarjit, he refused to leave the House and came to the well followed by his elder brother Balwinder Bains. The Speaker then called in the marshalls, directing them to force them out of the House.
The marshals, literally, picked both the legislators and took them out of the House.
Bains brothers staged a dharna outside the main entry of the House after the marshals denied them entry.
Simarjit Bains, talking to the media later, accused the SAD-BJP regime of “throwing them out” of the House.
Taking on the Chief Minister, Simarjit said Badal had been making big appeals to the masses on the SYl issue, but the Government is not ready to even tell why wasn’t it claiming the charges of water which had been flowing to Rajasthan for more than 50 years.
Citing a copy of the record of the decisions arrived at the inter-state conference on the development and utilisation of the waters of river Ravi and Beas in a meeting held in New Delhi in the month of January, 1955, Simarjit said that in the meeting it was decided that the States could decide on the cost of water.
As per my calculations, Rajasthan owe around `16.34 lakh crore to Punjab as the cost of water for the last 50 years, while the State is under a debt of only `2 lakh crore, he said.
He said Punjab was supplying 11.2 MAF water to Rajasthan and he was just making a demand that Punjab should recover the charges of its water.
“Prior to 1947, Maharaja Ganga Singh of the princely State of Bikaner used to give cost of water to Britishers for bringing water through Bikaner canal,” said Simarjit, adding that in case they come to power, Punjab would recover each and every pie from Rajasthan.