‘Congress ran away’: Raj CM on Opposition walkout during his speech in assembly

The Rajasthan assembly on Saturday witnessed prolonged spells of slogan shouting, heated exchanges, and pandemonium forcing repeated adjournments and making Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma to reply on the issue of development in the absence of the Opposition.

Annoyed with the disruption during the proceedings of the House caused by the Opposition, Sharma made sarcastic but offensive barbs against the arch rival Congress while presenting his government’s report card on development pertaining to the past two years. “The Opposition challenged us for debate on development under my government, I accepted and have come to the House well prepared for the debate. Since the Congress did not do any work on their part, they lack courage to face us, that is why they ran away (from the House).

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The flash point in the proceedings of the House came when the Chair called for debate on the performance of the BJP and the Congress in carrying out development works during their respective tenures, two years of the incumbent BJP regime and five years of the previous Congress-led government.

However, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Joga Ram Patel moved the motion for debate on only the development and fulfillment of poll promises during the BJP regime’s two years. This was unacceptable to the Opposition Congress. Hence, several members of the party rose simultaneously raising their objection to the term of reference of the debate.

Govind Singh Dotasra said, “The CM had accepted our challenge of two-year Vs 5-year. Since the government has nothing to its credit to present before the House, they are trying to avoid the debate.”

Leader of the Opposition Tika Ram Jully and others backed his contention with an uproar and thereby stalled the commencement of debate.

The treasury benches, while strongly contesting the Opposition’s argument, reciprocating with accusations against the grand old party over their regimes. At this stage, the Chief Minister quipped, “Had the Congress performed during their tenure in office, the party would not have been wiped out repeatedly during polls outings in the country.

Meanwhile, Dotasra’s personal comment against the Chief Minister further added to the pandemonium in the house. He had said, “We want to debate on the same format, let the CM himself debate with any of our party members provided that he doesn’t read from a written speech. Let the CM speak extempore.”

The potshots taken by the both sides against each other worsened the situation with pandemonium and mobbing in the well forcing the Chair to order back to back five adjournments between 03:30 pm and 06:00 pm.

Every time the house reassembled, Speaker Vasudev Devnani tried to pacify members so that the debate could be resumed but to no avail as the situation remained tense. So much so that, he had no option but to call on the Chief Minister to make his presentation amid ruckus. However, the protesting Opposition MLAs boycotted the proceedings within a few minutes of his starting speech.

The Chief Minister began on an offensive note targetting the Congress, “I have come well prepared along with documentary support to corner them. However, they ran away. Now, I will table all relevant papers and documents for the record.”

In his speech, he claimed that 18 285 of the 352 promises/commitments made by his party to the voters to fulfill in five years of our term have been fulfilled in just two years. We made 2,729 budgetary announcements, of which 919 are fully implemented while work is underway on 1,531 others.

In the previous Congress regime, he said, 4,148 announcements were made in the budget, however, as many as 2,208 of them remained unfulfilled. In the fifth and the final year (2023-2024) of their tenure (2018 to 2023), 1,426 announcements were made, of which 1,142 remained unfulfilled.