Stalemate in Bihar assembly ends as speaker revokes suspension of BJP MLA

The suspension of a Bharatiya Janata Party MLA in Bihar, ordered a day ago, was on Wednesday revoked by assembly Speaker Awadh Bihari Chaudhary, bringing the boycott of the proceedings by the opposition party to an end.

The BJP MLAs, who had staged a demonstration outside the assembly during the first half and marched to the Raj Bhavan during the lunch hour, were summoned by the speaker when the House reassembled at 2 pm.

The speaker sent Ajeet Sharma, the Congress Legislature Party leader, to fetch the estranged BJP members who had been protesting the suspension, for two days, of Patepur MLA Lakhendra Raushan who had ripped out the microphone on Tuesday but claimed that it came off on its own.

An imminent thaw was visible immediately upon the opposition members' return to the House, minus the suspended MLA.

Leader of the Opposition Vijay Kumar Sinha said, “I congratulate the Chair for this initiative. In a democracy, the Opposition is as indispensable a part of the legislature as the treasury benches”.

The speaker, too, appeared to be in a mood to let bygones be bygones as he ordered marshals to escort Raushan inside the House.

Raushan said, “No elected member of this August House has the intention to lower its dignity. Whatever happened yesterday (Tuesday) was not intentional. But I express regret for the same.”

The speaker, thereafter, proposed that the suspension be revoked and it was okayed by voice vote.

Communist Party of India-Maxist-Leninist-Liberation MLA Satyadeo Ram, with whom Raushan had engaged in a spat and whom the latter had accused of using “abusive language” also rose in his seat to say, “I maintain that allegations made against me are baseless and whatever happened appeared to be pre-planned. Nonetheless, I too express regrets.”

Normal legislative transactions resumed thereafter, with the Speaker urging members of both sides to maintain order.

The swift turn of events during the day brought to a quick end an unsavoury episode that had both sides, the ruling ‘Mahagathbandhan' and the opposition BJP, taking out their knives.

In the pre-lunch session, Rashtriya Janata Dal MLA Akhtarul Iman had stoutly opposed showing any leniency towards the BJP legislator, citing examples of states, like Gujarat and Uttarakhand, both ruled by the saffron party, where opposition members had been suspended en masse “in the name of maintaining order in the House”.

The BJP, on its part, had sought to remind the RJD, which helms the ruling ‘Mahagathbandhan', of its own conduct while in the Opposition.

State BJP president Sanjay Jaiswal had on Tuesday raked up the incident of 2021 when Sinha was the Speaker and RJD members had held him hostage inside his chamber for several hours.

RJD legislators too recalled the incident to underscore that Sinha and his party were guilty of “calling the police inside the House and getting legislators beaten up”.

Jaiswal had also sought to play the caste card, alleging that Raushan was being targeted because he was “a Paswan” and “castes emboldened by RJD's ascent to power had become contemptuous towards Dalits”.

Earlier, when Raushan had appealed against his suspension pleading that he was a “Dalit”, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary had frowned upon the “use of one's own caste identity inside the House by an elected member”.

That the attempt to play the caste card in the issue would backfire was evident from the remark of minister Kumar Sarvajeet, a Dalit himself, who had pointed out “Satyadeo Ram, with whom Raushan engaged in a spat, is no Brahmin”.