The political tussle in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly reached a crescendo on Wednesday with 10 members of the Opposition BJP being suspended for “indiscipline and unruly behaviour” as they tore copies of a Bill and hurled them at Deputy Speaker Rudrappa Lamani while he was in the Speaker’s chair.
The members indulged in the act while they were protesting in the Well of the House against appointing IAS officers as liaison officers for the leaders who had attended the national Opposition leaders’ meeting in Bengaluru on Monday and Tuesday.
Mr. Lamani named the 10 BJP members who indulged in “indiscipline and the episode of disrespecting the Speaker’s chair” and then the Assembly adopted a resolution on suspending them from the House for the remaining two days of proceedings.
Later, turning their ire on the Speaker, BJP leaders submitted a notice to the Assembly Secretary seeking permission to move a no-confidence motion against him in the House.
The suspended BJP members included former Deputy Chief Ministers R. Ashok and C.N. Ashwath Narayan besides former Ministers V. Sunil Kumar and Araga Jnanendra. The others who were suspended are Arvind Bellad, Vedavyas Kamath, Yashpal Suvarna, Dheeraj Muniraju, Umanath Kotian, and Bharat Y. Shetty.
There was high drama even after the suspension as Assembly marshals had to physically eject some of the members. BJP members in the Assembly took exception to this and staged a dharna in front of the Speaker’s chambers and on the steps of the Vidhana Soudha along with JD(S) members, terming the action as a “political vendetta”. However, the police took them into custody.
BJP leader and former Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai described this as a “murder of democracy” and alleged that the Speaker had become “a stooge in the hands of the government”.
Speaker U.T. Khader, however, said it was very painful to announce the suspension of MLAs, but there was no option as he had “the responsibility of protecting the honour of the seat”. He told the BJP members that he would have to take more stringent action if such a behaviour recurred.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah termed the behaviour of BJP members as an “act of goondaism”. Senior Minister Krishna Byre Gowda, who rushed towards the Speaker’s chair when the protesting members started throwing paper pieces at the Deputy Speaker, demanded that the BJP members should apologise to him.
“Just because the Deputy Speaker is a soft-hearted person and hails from an oppressed community, one cannot behave like this,” he said.
