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Niranjan Takle
Niranjan Takle

BUDGET SESSION

Maharashtra: 19 opposition MLAs suspended for nine months

PTI3_17_2017_000104B [File photo] Opposition members protesting against the BJP government on farmer's issues during the Maharashtra Assembly Budget session | PTI

10 MLAs from the NCP and 9 from the Congress to be suspended till December 31

Maharashtra Legislative Assembly witnessed a huge uproar today when Speaker Haribhau Bagade suspended 19 legislators from the opposition parties for nine months for disrupting the state budget presentation. 

Members from the opposition parties had tried to disrupt the budget presentation of finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar in the ongoing budget session on March 18. The MLAs had unfurled banners and resorted to sloganeering in order to demand loan waiver for the farmers in the state. 

The speaker suspended 10 MLAs from the NCP and nine from the Congress with immediate effect till December 31. This means that the suspended MLAs will lose out on the current Budget session, apart from the scheduled Monsoon session in Mumbai and the Winter session to be held in Nagpur.

“We have been demanding for the loan waiver for over two weeks now. The suspension is an attempt to silence our voices. This is a dangerous undemocratic thing,” said Jitendra Awhad, one of the suspended MLAs from NCP.  He said the NCP and the Congress will have to take their battle to the streets to defeat the government's intention of suppressing their voices. 

Maharashtra has had the maximum number of farmer suicides during 2015-16 and 2016-17. The state was planning to merge planned and unplanned expenditures for the year 2017-18. 

Opposition leader Radhakrishna Wikhe-Patil had described it a "complete fraud" move. “This budget is a complete fraud for the farmers in the state. Absence of loan waiver in the budget has shattered their lives completely,” said Wikhe-Patil. The farmers in the state are in distress since the last two years. “Two farmers have been committing suicides everyday for the last five months. After how many deaths is this BJP government going realize the gravity of this disaster?” he asked. 


Severe drought in 2015-16 brought the farmers on their knees. The fall in prices of agricultural produce as a consequence of demonetisation broke the farmers completely. 

Here's the list of the 19 suspended MLAs:

Amar Kale (Congress), Bhaskar Jadhav (NCP), Vijay Wadettiwar (Congress), Jitendra Awhad (NCP), Harshavardhan Sakpal (Congress), Madhusudan Kendre (NCP), Abdul Sattar (Congress), Sangram Jagtap (NCP), Avadhut Tatkare (NCP), D.P. Sawant (Congress), Sangram Thopte (Congress), Ameet Zanak (Congress), Kunal Patil (Congress), Deepak Chavan (NCP), Rahul Jagtap (NCP), Narhari Zirwal (NCP), Vaibhav Pichad (NCP), Jaykumar Gore (Congress), Datta Bharane (NCP) 

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