The deadlock in the State legislature over the episode of Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Prabhu Chavan being caught on camera seeing and zooming in on to a picture of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on his mobile phone in the Assembly was resolved on Friday with Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa suspending the legislator from the House for a day.
Mr. Thimmappa also warned Housing Minister M.H. Ambareesh and Congress MLA S.S. Mallikarjun, who had been captured by TV cameras while watching a video on a mobile phone in the Assembly, against repeating the act.
Following the Chavan episode on Wednesday, the proceedings of the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council were disrupted for the entire day on Thursday.
While the ruling Congress members had staged a dharna demanding disciplinary action against Mr. Chavan, the BJP had commenced a counter-protest insisting that similar action be taken against the two Congress members. This had led to a stalemate as the Congress members had maintained that their members’ act did not warrant any action as it was not “obscene”.
Dharna withdrawn
As soon as the Assembly met on Friday morning, Opposition BJP members withdrew their dharna demanding action against Mr. Ambareesh and Mr. Mallikarjun. They left it to the Speaker to decide on the nature of action to be initiated against Mr. Chavan as well as the Congress members.
Following this, the Speaker announced his decision of suspending the BJP MLA for seeing the picture in an “obscene manner” and warned the Congress members. After the suspension order was pronounced by the Speaker, the Assembly officials went up to Mr. Chavan and asked him to leave the House.
Using of mobile phone banned
The speaker also announced his decision of banning the use of mobile phones in the Assembly as per the report of a House committee, which had been constituted to look into the episode of three ministers in the BJP government watching a porn video clip in the Assembly in December 2012. He said an Ethics Committee would also be constituted as per the recommendation of that committee.
