Assembly Speaker Ashok Bhatt suspended 11 Congress MLAs from the House for three days till Tuesday following an uproar over the spurious liquor tragedy in Ahmedabad, on Friday. The Opposition members were suspended for the second consecutive day during the ongoing Budget Session.

The rest of the Opposition members, all dressed in black, walked out after the House marshals lifted out the suspended members for rushing towards the Well.

Finance Minister Vajubhai Vala forwarded the proposal to suspend the 11 members after the walkout and Urban Development Minister Nitin Patel seconded it.

The proposal was cleared by a voice vote. The suspended members are Mahendrasinh Vaghela, Gyasuddin Shaikh, Kanjibhai Talpada, Khumansinh Chauhan, Prabhubhai Vasava, Devjibhai Fatepara, Mohansinh Rathwa, Jitubhai Chaudhry, Pareshbhai Vasava, Javed Pirzada and Punabhai Gamit.

The uproar over the hooch tragedy had been going on in the Assembly for the last three days, but it was today that all Opposition members wore black clothes as a mark of protest.

They kept on chanting “latthana hapta kaun khaay; Amit-Modi, Amit-Modi” for 15 minutes before staging a walkout. Throughout the sloganeering, CLP leader Shaktisinh Gohil kept his back towards the Speaker.

Later, taking objection to this, Bhatt said the conduct of the CLP leader amounted to insult to the position of the Speaker. “For the last two days, the CLP leader could not meet eyes with me and today, he kept his back towards me, which is against parliamentary decorum and amounts to insult to the Speaker’s office,” Bhatt said, adding he was bringing this to the notice of Gohil.

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