Delhi Assembly session begins on stormy note, BJP MLAs marshalled out

New Delhi: The Delhi Assembly session began on a stormy note on Thursday with members of the ruling AAP and the opposition BJP trading charges on issues like termination of bus marshals and tree felling in the Ridge area.

AAP and BJP leaders also raised slogans against each other, prompting Speaker Ram Niwas Goel to adjourn the proceedings for 15 minutes.

BJP legislators demanded that the pending CAG reports be tabled in the House. They were marshalled out as they did not relent despite Goel's requests.

AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal, who returned to the assembly for the first time after resigning as chief minister, accused the BJP of stalling work for people's welfare while he was in jail.

Kejriwal walked out of Tihar jail here on September 13, hours after the Supreme Court granted him bail in the excise policy case being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia sat next to Kejriwal.

Sisodia was back in the House after almost a year and a half. He was also arrested in the excise policy case and was released from jail in August after spending 17 months behind bars.

It was also the first day of Atishi in the assembly after being sworn in as the chief minister of Delhi on Saturday.

The new government headed by Atishi is expected to seek a trust vote in the House on Friday.

As soon as Goel listed the names of leaders who would raise issues in the House, the BJP MLAs objected and demanded that their issues be raised as well.

Both AAP and BJP members then started raising slogans against each other. Amid the din, Goel adjourned the House for 15 minutes.

The BJP MLAs also demanded that pending CAG reports be tabled in the House and were marshalled out after they did not heed Goel's requests to maintain order.

Later, the BJP MLAs, including Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta, held a mock session outside the speaker's office in protest.

The session began with obituary references to CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury, the three students who died in the basement of a coaching institute in Delhi's Rajinder Nagar and victims of Manipur violence and a terrorist attack on a bus in Jammu.

AAP MLAs hit out at the BJP and Delhi Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena over various issues, including the termination of bus marshals and tree felling in the Ridge area.

They sought Saxena's resignation over the felling of trees.

Leader of Opposition Gupta alleged that AAP MLAs were "misleading" the public on the issue of felling of 422 trees to widen a road for the Central Armed Police Forces Institute of Medical Sciences (CAPFIMS).

"The permission to cut trees was granted by former chief minister Kejriwal," he claimed, adding that the AAP was wrongly blaming the LG for it.

Delhi minister Saurabh Bharadwaj asked Gupta to tell the Supreme Court about it.

He also alleged that the trees were felled on "verbal instructions" of the LG, even though junior officers of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) were suspended for it. The trees were not felled to widen the road but to save land of farmhouses in the area, Bharadwaj charged.

Environment Minister Gopal Rai said the AAP government planted crores of trees in Delhi and increased the city's green cover from 20 per cent to 23 per cent, thereby bringing down the pollution level by 34.6 per cent in the last 10 years.