Leader of the Opposition V.S. Achuthanandan has accused Chief Minister Oommen Chandy of adopting double standards while dealing with the incidents which occurred in the Assembly on the budget day.
Mr. Achuthanandan told reporters here on Tuesday that Mr. Chandy had called for a joint scrutiny of the Assembly visuals to find out whether United Democratic Front (UDF) members had committed any mistakes. Disciplinary action was taken against five Opposition MLAs without any such examination.
Joint scrutiny
Even if the Opposition agreed for a joint scrutiny, there was no surety that all the visuals of the day would be available for examination.
Speaker N. Sakthan had said that the incidents were a challenge to the social progress of the State, but he had not seen the UDF attack on the women MLAs, Mr. Achuthanandan said.
Poser to Speaker
He had said that the UDF MLAs had neither entered the well of the House nor looked at the Opposition members.
He had also not seen the UDF members distributing laddus after the Finance Minister read out the budget speech.
This was proof of the Speaker’s attitude, the Opposition leader said.
Mr. Achuthanandan said that certain portions of his speech in the Assembly on Monday were expunged from the records dubbing it un-parliamentary.
The Speaker can well delete the observations from the Assembly records, but cannot efface it from public memory. Mr. Sakthan was unable to reply to any of his questions, he said.
‘Mute spectators’
While Labour Minister Shibu Baby John, Congress members K. Sivadasan Nair, Dominic Presentation, Benny Behanan, and A.T. George attacked the women Left Democratic Front (LDF) legislators, Mr. Chandy, Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala, and others were remaining mute spectators.
The Left Democratic Front will go to any extent to protect the rights of its members, the Leader of the Opposition said, and read out the speech that he had made in the Assembly on Monday.
