Gujarat: Opposition Congress Stages Walkout From Assembly Over Fake Offices Issue, 10 Members Suspended For 1 Day

The opposition Congress party in Gujarat State assembly on Tuesday, staged a walkout on the discussion on fake offices nabbed in the state. The Congress alleged that instead of providing the appropriate information, the government was running away from its responsibilities and thereby shielding the perpetrators. The entire congregation of Congress members present in the house was suspended for both the house sittings on Tuesday.

While discussing on his question in the house during the question hour on Tuesday, Congress legislator from Khedbrahma, Dr.Tushar Chaudhary had asked the tribal development minister as to how come fake offices in Chhota Udepur district, under the name of tribal development department of government, had been paid crores of rupees.

“Fake offices functioning for 8 years can only operate successfully if the original office's authorities were conniving with them. It's not only the tribal development, but the irrigation department, the water resources department as well as the finance department officials involvement was also suspected, as these fake offices were provided with PLA accounts, barcodes and context numbers through which they were paid a staggering amount of ₹21 crores," said Dr.Chaudhary. Chaudhary demanded to know how much and what action was taken against such fraudsters.

Replying to this question, the tribal development minister Kuber Dindor informed the house, "Our department came across such information about such fake offices operating and taking strict action against them, lodged an FIR registered on October 26, 2023 and thereafter it came to the knowledge of others. So the government is proactively acting against it and five people were arrested. As far as the money paid to this fake office is concerned, the inquiry is going on."

However when Amrutji Thakor the Congress legislator from kankrej, asked the minister when did these fake offices were operating, the minister informed the house that these offices were functional since 2016-17 and the tribal development Department had paid ₹21 crores to these fake offices.

But it was when the minister started mentioning about past incidents of such fake things during the Congress regime, all the 10 legislators of Congress opposed and demanded that the minister speak on the current issue at hand and not speak out of context and started shouting. This infuriated the BJP legislators who stood up at the benches.

Tuesday saw an uproar in the house, where Congress legislators started sloganeering about the fake things that were happening during the BJP rule, like fake checkpoints (Toll Naka), fake currency notes, Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL), Prasad made from fake ghee, fake PMO officers, CMO officials.

The speaker of the house, Shankar Chaudhary asked the Congress legislators to calm down thrice but none of them responded and continued shouting slogans. One of the members even stepped into the well of the house.

The cabinet minister, Hrishikesh Patel proposed to the speaker to suspend all the present Congress members for the entire day's proceedings (including the sitting of the second day in the afternoon) which was supported by the industries minister Balwantsinh Rajput. The speaker then suspended all the 10 Congress legislators from both the seatings of Tuesday's house proceedings.

Besides the leader of the Congress, Amit Chavda and Jignesh Mevani, the other suspended MLAs include Tushar Chaudhary, Geniben Thakor, Gulabsinh Chauhan, Amrutji Thakor, Anant Patel, Imran Khedawala, Kanti Kharadi and Arvind Ladani. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Hemant Ahir joined the Congress legislators in the walkout.

Five of the Congress legislators were absent from the house on Tuesday morning, including Arjun Modhwadia, Shailesh Parmar, Dinesh Thakor, Vimal Chudasama and Kirit Patel.

Published on: Tuesday, February 20, 2024, 06:22 PM IST