Day two: Fish storm continues to disrupt monsoon session

PORVORIM: The storm over “formalin-in-fish” continued to affect work on Friday, the second day of the monsoon session of the House, as the opposition stuck to its demand for an immediate discussion on the issue and speaker Pramod Sawant refused to budge from his position. The House was adjourned till Monday without conducting any business.
On Wednesday, after coming under severe attack from public and a series of front-paged reports by TOI exposing the Manohar Parrikar-led government’s cover-up on the formalin issue, the chief minister banned import of fish from others states for 15 days.
Just like the previous day, on Friday too opposition MLAs persisted with their demand for a debate on the issue and the speaker kept repeating that the demand was unjustified. Sawant said the opposition MLAs had not given a notice seeking suspension of the question hour.
Speaker said the adjournment motion notice given by the Congress MLAs on Thursday is not valid for the next day. A notice is valid for just that particular day and he would not allow their discussion as there was no fresh notice, he said.
The speaker’s repeated pleas for maintaining decorum of the House fell on the deaf ears as the opposition legislators refused to take their seats.
The House witnessed some noisy scenes with ministers like revenue minister Rohan Khaunte, health minister Vishwajit Rane and tourism minister Manohar Azgaonkar also objecting to the debate.
BJP’s Bicholim MLA Rajesh Patnekar whose starred question was called, was shouting intermittently, “We want question hour.”