UPROAR IN HOUSE: Finance minister Jagdish Devda presents MP Budget 2022-23 amid Congress MLAs’ sloganeering

Bhopal(Madhya Pradesh): Congress continued sloganeering during one and half-hour long Budget speech of finance minister Jagdish Devda in Assembly on Wednesday. Congress legislators reached the well of the House raising slogans and finally staged a walkout when the FM concluded his Budget speech.  

Speaker Girish Gautam urged the Leader of Opposition Kamal Nath to ask Congress MLAs not to create uproar in the House. "We all know that annual budget is important and it is scheduled to be presented today. The annual budget decides the future of the development of the state. People want to know about it. I would urge Congress leaders to maintain dignity in the House," Gautam said.

However, the Congress MLAs did not pay heed to the requests and continued their protest.

As Congress’ intentions came clear, the Speaker asked finance minister to go ahead with the budget presentation. Congress MLAs started asking questions from the government on where the funds vanished before FM could start speaking.

Bala Bachchan blamed the government of putting the state in debt of Rs 3 lakh crore without showing any development on ground.

Parliamentary affairs minister Narottam Mishra said that Congress members did not even know when to oppose. Without hearing the budget speech they have started opposing it, said Mishra.

After a brief din, CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan stood and appealed to opposition benches to allow the budget speech and oppose it later. “This attitude of the members won’t leave a good impression as people are watching it,” said Chouhan. "This budget is not only for MLAs but for all sections of the society, including children, women, employees and others. They want to listen to the budget. They want to know what their government has done and what is proposed to be done. It would be wrong if the opposition does not allow the budget presentation," Chouhan said.

However, the appeal went unheard and Congress members kept shouting slogans during entire speech of the finance minister.

Congress member through slogans raised issue of inflation, unemployment, new pension scheme, deteriorating law and order situation, plight of farmers, crisis of fertilizers besides talking of ill-treatment of cows and large numbers of deaths of cows across the state.

The opposition benches said if government’s claim on employment is true then why have numbers of unemployed youth increased to 30 lakh in state?