SP members walk out of UP assembly demanding discussion on inflation

Demanding a discussion on the issue of inflation, Samajwadi Party members Thursday staged a walkout from the Uttar Pradesh assembly, raising slogans against the Uttar Pradesh government. On the fourth day of the ongoing Uttar Pradesh Assembly session, senior SP members Manoj Kumar Pandey and Rakesh Pratap Singh demanded the discussion under Rule-56 (stopping the proceedings of the House on urgent matters). Pandey said the entire House would agree that the poor in Uttar Pradesh are facing a crisis due to the rising inflation.

He said the way inflation is rising suggests the government was unable to tame inflation. If the government does not control it, he said, ''People will commit suicide and will be forced to migrate (from Uttar Pradesh)''. From the government side, Sugarcane Development Minister Chaudhary Laxmi Narayan said inflation mainly falls in the realm of the Central government. Discussing government schemes, he said India is the only country in the whole world where not even one person died of hunger during the Covid pandemic. Samajwadi Party leaders contested this claim prompting the minister to challenge them to ''give one example of anyone dying of hunger''. ''I will get it investigated,'' he said. ''Will anyone die of hunger in a state where 15 crore people are given free food grains?'' The minister also got angry on an ''objectionable word'' used by SP members during the exchange. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Suresh Khanna said the word should be expunged, which the Speaker agreed to. As the verbal duel between the SP and the ruling BJP intensified, Manoj Pandey said ''we are walking out of the house'' and they left, raising anti-government slogans. They later returned to join the proceedings.

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