Delhi BJP MLAs on Thursday staged a sit-in outside Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence and raised slogans after they were unconstitutionally expelled from the proceedings of the Assembly for the fifth day running.
The MLAs sat for two hours in front of the Chief Minister's house. Those on dharna included Leader of Opposition (LoP), Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, Mohan Singh Bisht, Vijender Gupta, Om Prakash Sharma, Jitendra Mahajan among others.
Ramvir Singh Bidhuri said that the Opposition members were not allowed to speak for five days in the Assembly session.
“If they have done good work in health and education, they should discuss it in the House. Why did they run away from discussing the issue in the House. The interesting part is that the ruling party MLAs were indulged in disrupting the proceedings,” Bidhuri said.
Earlier three BJP MLAs were marshalled out of the Delhi Assembly following an argument with Deputy Speaker Rakhi Birla who refused to accept their demand for a calling attention motion prior to debate and voting on the trust motion by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The rest of the BJP MLAs walked out of the House soon after this.
Earlier, Rakhi Birla had insisted that no calling attention motion notice would be taken up till the debate and voting on confidence motion concluded. Protesting against it, the LoP said there were a lot of issues to be discussed in the Assembly.
“There is shortage of drinking water, Delhi is the world's most polluted Capital city and there are health-related problems," he said.
He said there was no need to enact a "drama" to prove Arvind Kejriwal enjoyed the support of 62 AAP MLAs. Birla said the confidence motion was important considering "whatever has happened in Opposition-ruled States". All issues of the Opposition will be taken up once the confidence motion process is completed, she said.
When Opposition members did not relent, Birla ordered that BJP MLAs Vijender Gupta, Abhay Verma and Mohan Singh Bisht be marshalled out. The rest of the BJP MLAs walked out of the Assembly soon after The special session of the House was postponed sine die by the Deputy Speaker after a vote division, in which 58 MLAs voted in favour of the Kejriwal Government. Birla, in the chair, did not participate in the voting.
“The MLAs of the Opposition party also staged a sit-in outside the Chief Minister's residence in protest over muzzling of their voice in Assembly and the corruption in the Kejriwal Government, said BJP MLA Vijender Gupta.
Earlier in the morning, hundreds of workers of the BJP staged a massive protest outside Delhi Assembly, demanding the resignation of Arvind Kejriwal and his Deputy Manish Sisodia in alleged liquor and education scam.