Chennai: Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker P. Dhanapal dared the DMK chief M. Karunanidhi to raise his accusations against him in the Assembly rather than launch a misinformation campaign against him in the media.
Mr Karunanidhi, the Speaker said, had no locus standi to comment on his conduct, as everyone knows how he “disgracefully” treated the Speakers particularly K.A. Mathiazhagan in 1972. “He is giving wrong information in the media. I will reply to him if he comes to the Assembly and poses the questions to me,” he said rejecting the DMK legislators’ plea to reconsider his order suspending their 79 colleagues.
Monday saw rapid unfolding of events in the high security Assembly corridors. Police security was scaled up unprecedentedly to prevent the opposition DMK from staging mock Assembly agitation and the members of the public were disallowed from occupying the visitors’ galleries to witness the Assembly proceedings.
Finance minister and Leader of the House O. Panneerselvam was among those who arrived early to the Assembly House at 9.39 am. A majority of the 14 AIADMK women legislators turned up clad in green sarees and at 9.50 am Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa entered into the House to a loud thumping of benches.
Eight of the 10 non-suspended members of the Opposition DMK, came to the House by gagging their mouths with black clothes.
Pin drop silence prevailed for the next 10 minutes and exactly at 10 am the Speaker arrived and announced the commencement of the day’s proceedings after reciting a couplet from Thirukkural.
Immediately, the DMK members including former ministers: I. Peraisamy, K. N. Nehru and Ms Poongothai Aladi Aruna, urged the Chair to reconsider his July 17 ruling suspending 79 DMK legislators for a week. DMK’s allies — Congress and IUML made a similar plea.
But Mr Dhanapal said the DMK members were repeatedly criticised him outside the Assembly and despite repeated warnings they have not mended their ways. “I was compelled to take such an action and there is no question of reconsidering it,” the Speaker.
As the Speaker refused to concede to their demand, the DMK, Congress and the IUML members staged a walkout from the Assembly and boycotted the debate on the demand for grants for police, fire and rescue services and prison departments and also the Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa’s reply to the debate.
