Lucknow Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) MLAs staged a dharna against their own government in Uttar Pradesh after a ruling party lawmaker accused the present regime of harassing him in the Uttar Pradesh assembly.
The ruling and the opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh displayed a rare show of unity and forced the adjournment of the House for the day when the Speaker refused to let a BJP legislator discuss the alleged high-handedness of an official.
'Vidhayak Ekta Zindabad (long live the unity of MLAs'), chanted legislators when the House reassembled after adjournment over the issue during the Zero Hour. Amid the din, Speaker Hriday Narayan Dixit announced the adjournment of the House for the entire day.
There had been three brief adjournments earlier as Loni MLA Nand Kishor Gurjar tried to raise the matter of alleged high-handedness by a Ghaziabad food inspector with whom his representatives had reportedly had a quarrel on November 27.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Suresh Khanna and others were seen trying to calm down Gurjar during the periods of adjournment. Earlier, the Speaker observed that he was trying to understand the issue and said it would be resolved.
Angry over not being allowed to speak Gurjar sat on a dharna inside the house and he was later joined by the BJP MLAs.
Senior members Raghuraj Pratap Singh (Independent), Aradhana Misra alias Mona (Congress) and Lalji Verma (BSP) said it was perhaps for the first time that the House had been adjourned for the day because of a ruling party MLA. Even after the Speaker called it a day, some members from both sides kept occupying their seats.
Hriday Narayan Dikshit said the matter would be resolved to which leader of opposition Ram Govind Chaudhari remarked that unless the views of the MLA are heard in the House it would be difficult to find a solution.
Chaudhari said that the MLA has been humiliated.
Parliamentary affairs minister Suresh Kumar Khanna said that the opposition needs an issue and asserted that no one has been humiliated.
The MLAs who kept sitting in the House even after it was adjourned for the day were called by Dixit around 7 pm and assured of a solution after which they departed.
A BJP spokesman said it would be wrong to interpret the MLAs sitting in the house as dharna.
Earlier this month, Gurjar's representative was arrested in Ghaziabad for allegedly manhandling the food inspector at the MLA's office.
Gurjar levelled allegations of corruption against the food inspector after the arrest.
The Loni MLA is also an accused in the case and been served a show cause notice by the party over it. "A lobby of the BJP is active against me and they are hatching a conspiracy to tarnish my reputation. They provoked the food inspector into lodging an FIR against me," the MLA had then alleged.
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