Joint house session drowns in din as parties trade charges over sealing drive

As the House passed a resolution, seeking suspension of action against illegal commercial establishments for six months, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillors entered into a verbal spat.

Chaos prevailed in the joint session of three municipal corporations held on Saturday to discuss the sealing drive by the Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee.

Chaos prevailed in the joint session of three municipal corporations held on Saturday to discuss the sealing drive by the Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee.

As the House passed a resolution, seeking suspension of action against illegal commercial establishments for six months, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillors entered into a verbal spat.

Earlier, as the session started, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillors gathered in the well of the House and raised slogans against the ruling party. They alleged that the BJP has been insensitive to the issue and it was their inaction which had led to the situation. Some of the AAP councillors stood on their seats, forcing the mayors to adjourn the proceedings for 15 minutes.

Even as the mayors exited, the elected members of both parties continued arguing. Anticipating that the situation may go out of hand, Kamaljeet Sehrawat, the south Delhi mayor, called civic defence personnel posted at the Civic
Centre to maintain order. However, they too remained ineffective.

Then, the Congress councillors started creating an uproar and charged both the BJP and AAP for the sealing. As the mayors failed to pacify the members, they got the resolution passed amid the din without taking consent of the opposition parties and the House had to end abruptly.

As soon as the resolution was passed, few ruling party councillors also alleged that a councillor was drunk and misbehaved with them. However, they failed to identify the councillor.

Anju Jain, a councillor from Rohini said, “The person was unnecessarily arguing with them and when they told them to keep off, he tried to snatch the papers and microphones from us. We pushed him and he fell on the ground. The other councillors suggested that he could be drunk. We complained to the mayor immediately.”

She said as they raised the issue, the ‘accused’ rushed out of the House.

Sehrawat said, “We have asked the councillors to give a formal complaint. We will initiate an inquiry . We will take the help of CCTV footage to verify the facts,” she said.