Kolkata: The West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Friday had to cut short his maiden address in the Assembly on the opening day of the...
Kolkata: The West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Friday had to cut short his maiden address in the Assembly on the opening day of the Budget Session, completing it in just four minutes.
The BJP MLAs
protested as there was no mention of post-poll violence in Bengal in the
Governor’s speech.
Dhankhar
came to the Assembly at 1.55 pm and entered the hall after offering floral
tribute at B.R. Ambedkar’s statue. But the moment he started reading the speech
prepared by the state government, BJP MLAs started protesting from their own
seats before rushing to the well of the House with posters and placards in
their hands.
Dhankhar,
who was occasionally interrupted, was forced to stop his speech after just five
minutes of starting it. He then left the hall flanked by the Speaker Biman
Banerjee and the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
The Governor,
who recently had a controversial debate with Banerjee over the speech prepared
for him for the opening day of the Assembly session, was seen speaking to the CM
for a few minutes.
BJP
MLA and Leader of Opposition in the House, Suvendu Adhikari, said that the MLAs
from the Saffron camp protested during the Governor’s speech because it was
written by the state government without any mention of the post-poll violence
in Bengal.
On
the 13th page of the 14-page speech, there is mention of some people who are
termed as ‘opportunists’, and it has been said that ‘some people of this kind’
are trying to create disturbance.
“They
are spreading fake news and fake videos and are trying to divide the society.
The government will not accept this and strong action will be initiated against
them,” it said.
“We
have won 77 seats. We protested during the speech of the Governor as it was
written by the state government. It doesn’t mention anything about the
post-poll violence. We have shown pictures of 41 people who have been killed in
the violence while many women have been raped, but there is no mention of that
in the speech. The Governor also protested against the post-poll violence and
we respect his stand. But the speech that he delivered was prepared by the Mamata
Banerjee’s cabinet. The Governor had no say in it,” Adhikari said.
The
speech had courted controversy from the beginning. On Monday, Dhankhar had
alleged that he wanted to discuss certain portions of the speech with Banerjee,
because the said portions won’t be acceptable by the people.
However,
Banerjee had rejected the proposal, saying that the speech cannot be changed
because it has been approved by the Cabinet.
Sources
close to the Governor pointed out that Dhankhar also wanted the incidents of
post-poll violence to be included in the speech, but the state government was against
this.
This
triggered speculation whether Dhankhar would read the speech prepared by the
state or deviate from convention and read his own speech.
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