PATNA: An MLC of the opposition RJD in Bihar was on Monday suspended, for a day, following unparliamentary behavior inside the House.
The action against MLC Sunil Singh was taken by Acting Chairman of the legislative council Awadhesh Narain Singh after the former, led by other members of his party, staged a walkout.
Talking to reporters later, the MLC said the walkout was staged after the Chair told him that he will not be allowed to "speak a single word" despite having been allotted time for taking part in the debate on the Budget.
"Trouble started no sooner than I had held up a photograph of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar bending from his waist before Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Lucknow at the function where Yogi Adityanath was sworn in as UP CM," Singh said.
He said the treasury benches got livid and demanded that the episode be expunged from the proceedings.
"I thereafter read a poem," said the MLC, sharing the verses which contained many indirect references to Kumar's volte face in 2017 when he realigned with the BJP barely four years after severing ties and vowing never to return to the NDA.
"The Chair immediately told me that I will not be allowed to say one more word. I was taken aback. I had not, till then, made my submissions on the budget, which may put the state in a debt trap," said Singh, who is also the Chairman of Bihar State Cooperative Marketing Union.
He said he wondered why people were so upset over the picture which has been so widely used by the press, and is "such a work of beauty".
He also said the Chair "might have acted out of fear that the CM might arrive anytime and behave in the manner he did before the speaker of the assembly recently".
The reference was to the infamous outburst of Kumar following which Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha had excused himself from taking the Chair until he was mollified at a meeting with the chief minister.
It was widely speculated that the normally composed chief minister had exploded with rage that he might have accumulated over the BJP asserting itself following its increased numerical strength in the assembly.
The legislative council's acting chairman, too, is incidentally from the BJP.