NEW DELHI: About 100 MPs belonging to all parties and most of them to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes walked out of Rashtrapati Bhavan on Friday in protest against the “refusal” of the President R. Venkatraman to meet all of them.
The MPs belonging to the Parliamentary Forum of SC-ST MPs had marched from Parliament House to Rashtrapati Bhavan to present to the President a memorandum highlighting atrocities on the weaker sections. The President refused to comment and his staff informed the delegation that only 10 to 12 MPs could meet Venkatraman
The controversy between the Dalit MPs and the President has been building up for week now since his refusal to receive more than 10 persons in a delegation On its pant the forum insisted that he receive all the MPs who wanted to call on him. In protest the forum organized a protest march to Rashtrapati Bhavan on Friday. Agitated MPs belonging to all parties told pressperson afterwards that they had decided to walk out because the President was not prepared to receive the entire delegation which wanted to hand over a memorandum to him
Former Home Minister Buta Singh said afterwards on the memorandum was “given to the President’s Secretary before we walked out”.
However MPs belonging to the Opposition parties said the handing over of the memorandum was not on behalf of the delegation Several MPs-Ram Vilas Paswan (JD) Basudeb Acharyaand Malini Bhattacharya both of the CPM and Kalka Dass (BJP) were vociferous in their criticism of the manner in which the MPs had been treated. Some MPs threatened to stall the proceedings of Parliament saying that the act of not allowing the entire delegation to meet the President was “an insult” to Parliament’s prestige.
The matter was raised in the Lok Sabha later in the day when Paswan and some Communist MPs raised the matter. The Prime Minister assured the House that he would meet all the SC-ST MPs separately.
On being contacted Rashtrapati Bhavan sources said that the President had already studied the memorandum and sent it to the Prime Minister for action.
CHANDIGARH: Militants blew up a patrol jeep. killing a station house officer (SHO) injured « deputy superintendent of the Central Reserve Police Force in an ambush and fired at a passenger train killing Railway Protection Force jawan even as 21 persons were killed and two others kidnapped in Punjab Sept 11.
Besides the two securitymen the killed also included nine members of two families and six militants
An unidentified militant was shot dead while two CRPF personnel including a DSP were injured in a fierce gun-battle with a group of militants near Ram Diwali village in Majithe police district (Amritsar)
DSP Bhanu Partap Singh of the CRPF and its constable Tejinder Singh were injured in an encounter with militants near Mehtain Matha police district Wednesday report from Amritsar said.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 20, 1991
