Minister Agarwal’s outburst & mountain versus plain controversy hogged the limelight while the passage of stringent land law took a backseat
Gajendra Singh Negi | Dehradun
In the budget session of Vidhan Sabha which ended on Saturday, the Pushkar Singh Dhami led Bharatiya Janata Party government presented the much awaited bill on stringent land laws and got it passed.
During the session, the biggest ever State budget was also passed by the house. For the first time in the history of the State, the size of the budget exceeded Rs one lakh crore. Criticised always for the short duration of the Vidhan Sabha sessions, the government organised the budget session for five days which is the longest in recent times. The house was in session for 37 hours and 49 minutes during these five days. Similarly, a record was created on Friday when the members sat almost till midnight and proceedings continued for 11 hours 51 minutes with the members discussing the budget and other business. However, all these achievements got sidelined by the unsavoury behaviour inside the house and the controversy of plains versus mountainous areas of the State.
The session started on tumultuous note on February 18, when the members of the opposition Congress marched to the well of the house raising slogans for extending the duration of the budget session. The situation took a bad turn when the Congress MLA Madan Bisht clashed with Parliamentary Affairs minister Prem Chand Aggarwal, who later stated that the MLA was probably drunk. The Congress members staged a walkout during the governor’s address. On Friday, Parliamentary Affairs minister Aggarwal got so much annoyed by the utterances of the Congress members that he allegedly used expletives against the people of mountainous areas of the State.
The minister’s outburst created a major controversy which forced the government and chief minister Dhami to launch a damage control exercise. Congress MLAs again raised the issue of unparliamentary language by the Parliamentary Affairs minister on the last day of the session with Badrinath MLA Lakhpat Butola threatening to boycott the proceedings while tearing some documents in anger. This prompted the speaker Ritu Khanduri Bhushan to give a severe dressing down to the MLA. The outburst of the speaker also attracted criticism from various quarters as people questioned her for being unduly harsh on the member who was raising a genuine issue. The house also witnessed angry exchanges of words between independent MLA from Khanpur, Umesh Kumar and BSP MLA Mohammad Shahzad and a situation where the Agriculture minister Ganesh Joshi failed to reply to a question on natural farming prompting the speaker to suspend the question.
Amid acrimony between the treasury and opposition members, the government tabled the much anticipated Uttarakhand (Uttar Pradesh Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act 1950) amendment bill- 2025 in the house which was passed by a voice vote on Friday. The new law prohibits purchase of land by outsiders in the rural areas of 11 mountainous districts of the State barring Hardiwar and Udham Singh Nagar. Interestingly, the bill was passed without much debate inside the Vidhan Sabha while the din of the unpleasant Pahadi versus maidani debate engulfed other discussions.
