Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 11: The Lower House of State Legislature today witnessed four walk-outs by Opposition MLAs over different issues.
As soon as the House assembled this morning, the BJP MLA Ch Sukhnandan raised the issue of shifting of 10th Class Examination Centre from Marh area without any prior information to the students. As pandemonium broke in the House after PDP MLAs started protest against the use of pepper gas by the police against the protesters in the Kashmir valley, Ch Sukhnandan left his seat and moved into the well of the House to lodge protest over the shifting of examination centre at the 11th hour.
Later, the Speaker Mubarak Gul allowed BJP MLA to raise the issue from his seat. “The fate of students of examination centre which was shifted without any prior information would hang in balance and there should be proper response from the Government over the issue”, Ch Sukhnandan said.
When the Speaker asked the MLA to give some time to the Government to enquire into the issue before giving a statement on the floor of the House, Ch Sukhnandan again moved into the well of the House and after holding protest for sometime staged walkout along with BJP’s other legislators—Ashok Khajuria, Sham Choudhary and Jugal Kishore.
Second walkout was staged by all the three National Panthers Party (NPP) MLAs—Harshdev Singh, Balwant Mankotia and Yashpal Kundal while expressing dis-satisfaction over the reply of Minister Incharge Power, Vikar Rasool in response to their queries regarding electrification of un-electrified villages.
While raising supplementary to the question of Congress MLA from Chenani, Krishan Chander Bhagat, NPP MLA Harshdev Singh said, “even in the hi-tech era several villages of the State are still crying for power supply. There seems to be no plan with the Government to electrify all the un-electrified villages and hamlets”, adding “on one side the Government has put bar on the use of Constituency Development Fund for providing transformers to the people and on the other side it has failed to repair or upgrade the transformers in a time bound manner”.
Joining the issue, Hakim Yasin said that due to failure of the Power Development Department in timely repairing the transformers people have been facing many problems while as CPM MLA Mohd Yousaf Tarigami stressed that Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, who is also holding the power portfolio, should take immediate steps to overcome the bureaucratic hassles, which have been resulting into delay in repair of transformers and up-gradation of power network.
Independent MLA from Langate, Engineer Rashid also raised the similar issue and sought to know why the VVIP defaulters were not being taken to task by the Power Development Department.
Though the Minister of State for Power, Vikar Rasool said that leftover villages and hamlets would be covered under Rajiv Gandhi Gramin Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY), he failed to convince the NPP MLAs, who staged walk-out while expressing dis-satisfaction over the Minister’s reply.
BJP MLA Bharat Bhushan also staged walkout as despite listing of his question at serial number 13 he was not allowed to raise any supplementary. The fourth walk-out was staged by Sham Lal Choudhary as his question could not be taken up. He tore the written reply of Minister Incharge Agriculture before leaving the House in protest.
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