BJP members protesting after being sent out of the Vidhan Sabha in Delhi.
Three BJP MLAs were marshalled out of the Delhi Assembly on Thursday following an argument with Deputy Speaker Rakhi Birla who refused to accept their demand to speak before a trust motion was to be moved by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The rest of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs walked out of the House soon after.
Mr Kejriwal tabled the trust motion on Monday levelling charges of MLA-poaching on the BJP to show that the alleged "Operation Lotus" of the party had failed in Delhi.
Rejecting the BJP's demands, Ms Birla said no calling-attention motion notice will be taken up, until the debate and voting on confidence motion concluded.
Protesting, Leader of Opposition Ramvir Singh Bidhuri said there are a lot of issues to be discussed in the assembly — "there is shortage of drinking water, Delhi is the world's most polluted capital...there are health-related problems". He said there was no need to enact a "drama" to prove Arvind Kejriwal enjoyed the support of 62 AAP MLAs.
Ms Birla said the confidence motion is important considering "whatever has happened in opposition-ruled states". All issues of the Opposition will be taken up once the confidence motion process is completed, she said.
When BJP members did not relent, she ordered that Vijender Gupta, Abhay Verma and Mohan Singh Bisht be marshalled out.
The special session of the House was later adjourned until next the session by the deputy speaker. In the trust vote, 58 MLAs voted in favour of Kejriwal government. Ms Birla, in the chair, did not participate in the voting. Three others were not present due to unavoidable reasons, such as being in jail.
"BJP MLAs were not allowed to speak in the special session for the fifth consecutive day of the House," Mr Bidhuri later said. They staged a sit-in outside the chief minister's residence in protest over "muzzling" in the assembly.
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