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Assembly business hit for third consecutive day

BHUBANESWAR: The proceedings of the State Assembly were badly affected for the third consecutive day on Friday with the Opposition members stalling the proceedings over the issue of alleged suicide by more than 30 farmers over the past few weeks.

Pandemonium prevailed in the House as soon as the question hour started at 10-30 am. The Congress legislators showed posters of the farmers who had committed suicide allegedly due to crop loss and debt burden as the question hour was in progress.

As their demand for obituary references to condole the death of the farmers in the House was rejected by Speaker Pradip Kumar Amat, the Congress members observed silence for two minutes to pay respect to the farmers who had committed suicide in the State.

But a fresh controversy soon started when the Speaker immediately gave a ruling that no other business outside those mentioned in the list of businesses for the day should be reported by the media.

As the presspersons came out of the press gallery following the ruling and staged a protest against the ruling, the Congress members entered the well shouting slogans against the Speaker’s ruling about reporting of the proceedings by the media.

The Speaker then adjourned the proceedings till 11-30. But the opposition kept on taking up the farmer suicide issue again and again and the proceedings were adjourned six times in the pre-lunch session.

The proceedings were adjourned for the day at 3 pm as there was no change in the opposition stand on the farmer suicides.

Outside the house, several ruling party legislators approached the agitating journalists and requested them to change their stand. Subsequently, the Speaker revised his ruling after Parliamentary Affairs Minister Raghunath moved a motion requesting the Speaker to change his stand on the issue.

Meanwhile, another farmer allegedly committed suicide in Soro Block of Balasore district during the day. The farmer, Basanta Nayak, ended his life by hanging himself from a tree near his house.

The family members said that Nayak took the extreme step as his crops had failed due to very little rainfall and he was also not able to repay the loans he had taken from different sources, including a micro-credit organisation.

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