Congress boycotts Punjab assembly over CM Mann's remarks

Chandigarh, Mar 08: A day after chief minister Bhagwant Mann and leader of the opposition Partap Singh Bajwa sparred in the state assembly over the functioning of the Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB), the Congress on Tuesday announced its decision to “boycott” Mann in the House till the time he apologized for his “threatening posture” towards its members.

 

 

 

Bajwa apprised speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan about the unanimous decision of the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) to boycott the chief minister as soon as the Zero Hour began. He said the Congress members would not participate in the proceedings so long as the chief minister was present. “When the CM is not there, we will participate in all the deliberations in the House. As and when he shows up, we will get up and go out,” he said immediately after entering the House along with some other party MLAs just a few moments before the Question Hour got over. Mann was not present at that time.

 

 

 

On Monday, Mann and Bajwa had a face-off after the latter, while participating in the discussion on the motion of thanks on the governor’s address, raised questions on the vigilance bureau’s functioning. Alleging that the CM had made a “threatening gesture by pointing a finger” towards the opposition benches, the Congress MLAs demanded an apology from him and later boycotted proceedings for the rest of the day. Raising the issue in the state assembly on Tuesday, Bajwa also said that they had made a request to the speaker as the custodian of the House to tell the CM to condemn his unparliamentary language a day ago, but there was no word from him. “His threatening posture was condemnable in parliamentary language. We were thinking he will show a large heart and say he is extremely sorry for hurting the sentiments of some members, but he has not come,” Bajwa said. When Mann came to the House to reply to the discussion on the governor’s speech, the Congress legislators got up and left. Governor Banwarilal Purohit delivered his address on the opening day of the budget session on March 3. During the Zero Hour, school education minister Harjot Singh Bains and Congress member Sukhpal Singh Khaira also had a heated exchange of words after the latter raised questions over the process of selection of government school principals sent by the state government to Singapore for a training seminar. Khaira said the condition that the applicants should have five years’ experience was changed to two years, and they were also given time till January 20, 2023, to apply with relaxed conditions but the CM got his photos taken with the first batch of principals on January 21. “How was this possible? They just completed the process overnight,” he said.

 

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Bains, while offering to send Khaira along with the third batch of school principals, said that anyone could apply for foreign training and there were conditions related to five years of experience, academic record, annual confidential record, and five years of service left. “The experience condition was relaxed from five years to two years to send young principals for training, but he (Khaira) put out a tweet wrongly claiming the pending service condition was changed to two years,” the minister said. Denying any favoritism in the selection, Bains said all principals would be sent for training abroad and the portal was kept open till January 20 for the second batch. Reading out the Congress member’s tweet in the House, the minister accused him of spreading fake information. On being asked by the speaker if he had posted the tweet being referred to by the minister, Khaira said he had flagged the issue along with the public notice of the director, SCERT, but the minister was pointing out some technical error in the tweet. “If he (minister) feels wrong information has been given, he should complain to the cyber cell and get an FIR registered against me,” Khaira dared the minister. Bains replied that if the member’s tweet was wrong, they would file the complaint and let the police take action.