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Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi
The Lok Sabha on Thursday defeated the adjournment motion of the Congress on the Unit Trust of India controversy amidst chaos after opposition members prevented Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha from replying to the debate.
The trouble began when Sinha got up to reply to the debate on the motion.
While congratulating senior Congress member Priyaranjan Dasmunshi on his speech on the motion, Sinha remarked that Rashtriya Janata Dal member Raghuvansh Prasad Singh's intervention was not worthy of a reply.
This infuriated the opposition members who stormed the well of the House and shouted slogans seeking Sinha's dismissal. "Chori aur seenajori nahin chalegi," they shouted.
The pandemonium continued for almost 50 minutes despite repeated appeals by Speaker G M C Balayogi to the members to restore order. Sinha too stuck to his guns, refusing to withdraw his remark against the RJD member.
At this juncture Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee rose to his feet to say something, but the opposition members did not allow him to talk and continued to shout slogans.
The speaker then warned the opposition benches that he would put the adjournment motion to vote.
When the opposition members remained in the well of the House, the speaker put the motion up for a voice vote and declared it defeated.
Till the end, Finance Minister Sinha could not reply to the debate on the motion.
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