Bengal’s lawmakers dragged the assembly down to the gully pits, choosing fists and cuss words when a debate was denied. In the bedlam in the well of the House, legislators punched each other and a woman CPM MLA was “pulled by the hair” and allegedly “lifted to the treasury benches” by male MLAs.
Two women MLAs from the CPM and the Trinamool Congress were taken to hospital and a CPM legislator was hospitalized for head injuries. Speaker Biman Banerjee suspended three CPM MLAs-—Nazmul Haque, Susanta Besra and Amjad Hossain—for the rest of the session, triggering cries of bias from the Opposition.
The dishonour to the House surpasses all precedence in the Bengal assembly. It was worse than the unruly scenes in the Sixties when Left legislators hurled tomatoes and eggs at the chair and even threw shoes at then Governor Dharamvira. But never had members of the treasury benches participated in the bedlam so enthusiastically as newly-inducted minister Becharam Manna and deputy Speaker Sonali Guha. Their seniors Firhad Hakim, Partha Chatterjee and Subrata Mukherjee tried to defuse the tension but were not match for the gung-go greenhorns in the treasury benches. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee was not present in the House.
Trouble broke out soon after the Speaker ruled out discussion on the Left Front’s adjournment notice on chit funds. When the notice was being read out in the House, Opposition leader Surya Kanta Mishra protested that it had been “severely edited”. Furious Left members rushed to the Speaker’s podium and surrounded it, shouting slogans, but he ignored them and moved on to the mention cases. Security personnel rushed to throw a cordon around the Speaker. A number of Trinamool legislators, including some ministers, also ran to the well of the House to shield Banerjee. Soon, women legislators got involved in the melee.
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