Opposition Grand Alliance forced a discussion over police brutality against opposition MLAs in the premise of Bihar Legislative Assembly on March 23. The incident had taken place during the passage of the Bihar Special Armed Police (BSAP) bill.
Denouncing the unprecedented action, the leader of opposition in the house Tejashawi Yadav remembered it as a day when democracy was murdered and declared it as the most shameful day in the history of the house.
Taking the swipe at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar Tejashwi said, “Although the accountability of the incident has been fixed with the Speaker of the house Vijay Kumar Sinha, being the guardian of the house the speaker would never allow brutality of such a scale against legislators. It’s someone else behind this.”
On the other hand representing the treasury benches parliamentary affairs minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary put the onus on opposition and said that the responsibility to uphold the dignity of the house also lay with the opposition. He maintained that the government had nothing to do with the incident since the assembly is under the sole jurisdiction of the speaker.
“It is one unique situation in which the government had no role to play, right from running the house to requisitioning of police. Whatever had transpired was in the jurisdiction of the Assembly speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha, who was the custodian of the House.
The opposition has been demanding an apology from Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as well as strict action against the policemen involved. Tejashwi Yadav had announced on Tuesday that the opposition will boycott the Monsoon Session as they were not getting a favorable response.
Curiously, echoing the sentiments of opposition, former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi went on to suggest that he might not contest the election again as he never faced such a situation in his 36 years of experience in the House.
