MP Speaker expunges his own utterances

Bhopal, March 8: In an unprecedented move, the Madhya Pradesh Assembly Speaker Sriniwas Tiwari today expunged from the record his own utte...

Bhopal, March 8: In an unprecedented move, the Madhya Pradesh Assembly Speaker Sriniwas Tiwari today expunged from the record his own utterances made during the zero hour when he upbraided Finance Minister Ajay Narayan Mushran.

“Go and increase corruption”, the Speaker had shouted at Mushran during an argument with him over the issue of suspension of a state government official, who had allegedly held up the release of MLAs’ development funds.

Responding to allegations by Ramakant Tiwari (BJP) and two others, the Speaker had directed Mushran to immediately

suspend the official concerned.

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The Speaker flared up when Mushran said he would order the suspension only after conducting an inquiry.

Tiwari said this amounted to arguing with the chair and declared that after his directive for the suspension of the official concerned, there was no room for an inquiry.

But Mushran insisted that he would like to conduct an inquiry into the matter first before ordering suspension, which further enraged the Speaker to shout at him.

Following this Mushran walked out of the House. Later, an assembly spokesman said the Speaker has expunged the utterances.

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Mushran, while raising a point of order at the fag end of the sitting, said there was no need for the Speaker to expunge his own words and added the house has a tradition under which no Speaker has till now said anything wrong, hence there was no question of ever expunging what has been said by the Speaker.

Deputy Speaker Ishwar Das Rohani, who was in the chair, however, rejected Mushran’s point of order and ruled that since the words had already been expunged, no point of order could be raised about it.