The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and Congress MLAs staged a walkout after they were denied an opportunity to speak on the interception of three containers transporting Rs 570 crore in Tirupur in the run up to the recent Assembly elections.
When Leader of the Opposition M.K. Stalin started to speak on the issue, Finance Minister O. Panneerselvam, who is also the AIADMK’s floor leader, informed Speaker P. Dhanapal that the issue was being probed by the Election Commission (EC) and should not be a topic of discussion in the Assembly.
Mr. Stalin and DMK deputy leader Duraimurugan tried to convince the Speaker who refused them permission to speak any further on the issue and expunged all the remarks. Disgruntled, the DMK MLAs led by Mr. Stalin walked out.
Subsequently, Congress leader K.R. Ramasamy asked under what rule was the Speaker denying permission to talk on the issue.
However, the Speaker said the day’s proceedings were over. Mr. Ramasamy said the Congress also was walking out in protest.
Earlier when Mr. Stalin began to talk about the Government’s Vision 2023 plan, Speaker Dhanapal asked AIADMK MLA K. Pandiarajan to speak.
In protest, the DMK MLAs started questioning the Speaker as to how he could ask an MLA to give a reply when the treasury benches were there.
They had been objecting to frequent interruption by the Ministers. Pandemonium prevailed for a while but the Speaker said the opposition members could not give him directions or dictate terms.
Recalling the past, the Speaker said that when Chief Minister Jayalalithaa spoke as the Leader of the Opposition in 2006, there were 65 interventions and mentioned the names of members of other parties also. To that the DMK members said they were all leaders of respective parties and kept on shouting.
After a while, Mr. Pandiarajan was allowed to speak but Mr. Stalin wanted to know the progress of the projects taken up so far. In reply, Finance Minister O. Panneerselvam said 85 projects have been started, 17 were in the tender finalising stage, 26 were in DPR and the remaining 89 in planning stage.
