UP budget session off to a stormy start

The budget session of the Uttar Pradesh legislature witnessed mayhem on Tuesday with slogan shouting opposition Samajwadi Party members disrupting Governor T V Rajeshwar's speech by standing on their seats and throwing paper balls to protest against government's functioning.
    
Displaying banners and raising the issue of murder of a public works department engineer in Auraiya for refusing to pay money allegedly for Chief Minister Mayawati's birthday celebrations, the angry opposition members created a commotion as soon as the governor arrived to address the joint session of the house in the forenoon.
 
Samajwadi Party members threw paper balls and stood on their seats besides climbing the official reporters' desk holding black flags and did not allow the governor to deliver his address. Amidst the pandemonium, the governor was merely seen reading a portion of his 71-page address and thereafter departed with a hurried "jai hind".  

SP members continued raising slogans for sometime in the presence of leader of opposition Mulayam Singh Yadav.
     
The Bharatiya Janata Party's members were not present in the house as they had already decided to boycott the governor's address.
   
The assembly was later adjourned till Wednesday.The scene was similar in the legislative council with SP and Rashtriya Lok Dal members opposing the reading of the governor's address raising anti-government

slogans forcing the adjournment of the upper house for the day.

SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav accused the Uttar Pradesh Governor T V Rajeswar of being soft on the ruling BSP and alleged that the constitutional authority is "impressing" Congress that the BSP may help them form the next government at the centre.
    
"The governor has assured the Congress high command that the BSP was in for major gains in the coming elections and it would ensure that a Congress prime minister assumes office after the Lok Sabha polls," Yadav said after his party
disrupted the governor's address to the joint session of the state legislature.
    
Yadav alleged that the UP Congress want to run itself with the help of the governor but in turn, he was ruining the
party.
     
Charging the state government with all round failure, especially on the law and order front, the SP leader said if the governor had desired he could have stopped the atrocities at the hands of the police as well as the ruling party MLAs
and ministers by taking up the issues with the chief minister.
    
"The governor used to continuously write letters when I was chief minister... what has happened now when officials are being killed at the hands of ruling party men," he said.
    
He also alleged that BSP MLAs and ministers are grabbing precious land in the state capital.