CHENNAI: The State Assembly on Wednesday witnessed pandemonium over a remark made by an AIADMK member on Opposition Leader MK Stalin's election campaign tour ahead of May 16 Assembly elections. In the end, Speaker P Dhanapal ordered eviction of all DMK members en masse and adjourned the House proceedings for the day.
The Speaker also awarded a week's suspension to the party MLAs, following which the principal opposition party has called for a meeting of its legislators at DMK headquarters, Anna Arivalayam, later this evening to decide the future course of action.
Condemning the behaviour of the DMK members, the Speaker said since the DMK were not cooperating with the Chair in conducting the proceedings of the House smoothly, the was adjourning the House proceedings for the day and that the Minister for IT R Manikandan and Minister for Housing, K Radhakrishnan would give their replies to the discussion on the demands for grants for their departments tomorrow.
It all started when Gunasekaran said ‘those who have shouted “Namakku Namey” could not catch power’, drawing quick opposition from the DMK members who were on their feet demanding the expunction of the remark. But the Speaker refused the demand. At this juncture, Stalin entered the House pacified the DMK members not to take this as a big issue and said a debate of Namakku Namey would, indeed an honour for the DMK and also made a remark concerning Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa. Following this, the DMK members resumed seat and Gunasekaran continued his speech.
However, within a minute, the Speaker announced expunction of the remark made by Stalin. This drew strong opposition from the DMK members. Stalin and others demanded that either the remarks made by him and Gunasekaran should be there on the records or both should be expunged. Since the Speaker refused to budge, the DMK members were on their feet reiterating their earlier demand.
After his appeals to the DMK members to resume their seats failed; the Speaker called in the Marshals to evict them en masse. Later, talking to mediapersons, Stalin explained what had happened in the House and charged that the DMK members had been evicted en masse with a view to prevent them from attending the discussion on the demands for grants for Police Department. A decision on the future course of action would be during the meeting of the DMK legislature party this evening.