Kerala Assembly adjourned amid Opposition protest; Speaker switches off LoP's mike

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Assembly was adjourned shortly after it began with Speaker A N Shamsheer running through the day's proceedings amidst protest by the Congress led Opposition.
The Assembly will resume on March 20. A protest began after the Speaker refused to allow Leader of the Opposition V D Satheesan to raise during Question Hour the issue of registration of cases against UDF legislators for non-bailable offence in connection with alleged attack on House marshals during a ruckus in front of Speaker's office on Wednesday.
Speaker Shamsheer turned off the LoP Satheesan's microphone during the Question and Answer session in Assembly.
"It is very unfortunate that the situation has turned into a state that the complainants are being made criminals here. A case has been registered against the MLAs who protested in the Assembly last day regarding the Brahmapuram incident", said the LoP while speaking in Assembly.
Satheesan was referring to the registration of cases by Kerala Police against Opposition MLAs in connection with the ruckus in front of the state Assembly Speaker's office on March 15. Two cases were registered on the basis of complaints of Saneesh Kumar MLA and Watch and Ward employee Sheena.
The Speaker then intervened duruing LoP Satheesan's speech and asked him to conclude as he had made his point. When Satheesan continued to speakeven after continuous stop signals from the speaker, the latter turned off Satheesan's microphone.
The opposition protested and trooped into the Well of the House forcing the Speaker to adjourn the House for the day in the session that lasted for about nine minutes.
Earlier on Thursday, The Kerala Assembly session was adjourned after a deadlock between the opposition and the ruling party continued over a clash in the house. Speaker Shamseer spoke about the March 15 incident and said, "Yesterday's incident was unfortunate and it would not have happened."
The Speaker sought the cooperation of the opposition to conduct the session but due to the continuous ruckus assembly was adjourned.
Yesterday, the Speaker called an all-party meeting and according to sources, there was a war-of-words in the meeting between Kerala Pinarayi CM Vijayan and opposition leader Satheesan.
Satheesan had yesterday said, "The Kerala government feels inconvenient to talk about the issues that we raise, the CM denied the opportunity for an adjournment motion, he was saying that he will choose the subjects, which is very unfortunate."
"We also demanded action against two CPI(M) MLAs and the Deputy chief marshal of the watch and ward for attacking our MLAs for assaulting the UDF MLAs while staging a protest outside the office of the Speaker on March 15," Satheesan added.
The LoP alleged that LDF MLAs H Salam, Sachin Dev were attacked and Revolutionary Marxist Party MLA K K Rema and her husband were brutally attacked by the CPIM. "Rema's hand was broken. So how can we cooperate with them when they are denying our rights? That is the question," Satheesan said.
Kerala Police has registed cases against a few UDF MLAs in the connection with the ruckus outside the Speaker's office on Wednesday. (ANI)