New Delhi, March 24 (IANS) Delhi Assembly Speaker Vijender Gupta on Tuesday expressed regret over Leader of the Opposition Atishi’s absence from the legislature’s proceedings and condemned her party MLAs for speaking ill of the Chair over the suspension of four AAP MLAs by the House.

In a letter in response to Atishi’s email seeking revocation of the suspension, Gupta said, “I have reminded you earlier too that, as the Leader of Opposition, it does not behove you to drag the Chair and the House to cover up your failures and objectionable behaviour of your party Members. Instead of accepting and repenting on the unparliamentary action of the AAP Members, you are trying to blame the Chair.”

“Even in your present letter, you have ‘demanded’ that the suspension of the Members be revoked. The four Members should, in fact, repent for their actions and apologise to the House,” said Gupta.

“Contrary to your baseless allegations of authoritarian and biased conduct, History and the Assembly records are witness to the fact that the present House under my Chairmanship has been more tolerant and indulgent to the Opposition Members when compared to the previous years,” said the Speaker, adding that this tolerance and indulgence, cannot and shall not be at the cost of the smooth and productive conduct of the House proceedings.

Sharing the sequence of events that forced the House to suspend the four AAP MLAs, the Speaker said, “I would like to remind you that during our meeting on March 21, I had advised that you should attend the sitting and the House would take a decision on the matter, because it was the House which had suspended the Members and only the House had the powers to recall the Members.”

In spite of being aware of the Rules and my specific advice, you did not attend the sittings and instead, as usual, decided to abstain and blame the House and the Speaker, he said.

It is not surprising, because even earlier, when you made objectionable remarks against Sikh Gurus, you fled the House and have not attended the sittings even after repeated requests from the Chair, said the Speaker.

Four AAP MLAs — Sanjeev Jha, Kuldeep Kumar, Somdutt and Jarnail Singh – were suspended for disrupting proceedings and disobeying the Chair’s directions during the last sitting of the Delhi Assembly.

–IANS

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