Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Haribhau Bagade on Wednesday suspended 19 Opposition MLAs for creating a ruckus in the House while the state Budget was being presented on Saturday, PTI reported. The House suspended nine legislators of the Congress and 10 of the Nationalist Congress Party till December 31 after adopting a resolution presented by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Girish Bapat.
Bapat had said the Opposition MLAs had behaved in a “disgraceful and unconstitutional” manner when state Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar was presenting the Budget.
As there was no mention of waiving farmers’ loans in the Budget, the MLAs had shouted slogans, displayed banners and burnt copies of the Budget.
Leader of Opposition Radha Krishna Vikhe Patil staged a walkout after the announcement. He said the Devendra Fadnavis-led government was not sensitive towards the farmers’ plight and was trying to muzzle the Opposition’s voice through “undemocratic means”, mint reported.
Mungantiwar said the action was well within the constitutional norms. “You can’t call suspension unprecedented because you had taken similar action three years ago,” he added.
On the absence of farmer loan waiver in the Budget, Fadnavis had said the government was planning to introduce more schemes for farmers. “While we help 31 lakh farmers to become debt-free to facilitate fresh crop loans, we have to provide some incentives to more than one crore farmers who have made loan repayments regularly,” he said.
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