Bihar Assembly Budget session starts on a stormy note, Oppn protests communalism

Patna: The budget session of the Bihar assembly commenced on Friday on a stormy note, as many opposition members staged protests against a provocative statement about minorities by a ruling BJP MLA and suspected lynching of a leader of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U) by cow vigilantes.

Congress MLAs Shakeel Ahmed Khan and Rajesh Ram also boycotted Governor Phagu Chauhan's customary address to the joint session as a token of protest against the communal vitiation as evident from the two instances. Hari Bhushan Thakur Bachaul, who represents Bisfi assembly segment, had on Thursday said that Muslims had been given a separate country at the time of Partition and those who have chosen to stay back should be stripped of voting rights and made to live as second class citizens .

Bachaul had made the outrageous remark when his attention was drawn by journalists, on the previous day, to Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM's demand for a proportional representation of the minority community in elected bodies.

The Hyderabad MP's party has five MLAs in Bihar, and state unit chief Akhtarul Iman took strong exception to the BJP legislator's comment and said he would bring the matter to the notice of Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha and demand disqualification of Bachaul.

MLAs of the Congress stood outside the assembly premises, holding placards condemning the utterances of Bachaul and killing of JD(U) leader Mohd Khalil Rizvi whose charred body was found buried recently in Samastipur district. A video has gone viral on social media in which Rizvi can be seen being beaten up by a mob that accused him of consuming beef.

According to police, one person has been arrested in connection with the killing, and apparently, the assailants had set Rizvi's body on fire after beating him to death.

It was decided by our party that a couple of us will boycott the governor's address to highlight the deeper malaise that has got reflected in the brutal incident involving Rizvi and the brazen statement of Bachaul, Congress MLA Shakeel Ahmed Khan said.

The party has 19 legislators in the 243-strong assembly.

Khan and Rajesh Ram sat in a lawn situated adjacent to the main Vidhan Sabha premises where they sang Hum honge kaamyab , the Hindi version of the song We shall overcome .

Rizvi's killers may have been caught and Bachaul may get a rap on the knuckles. But the problem has become bigger than a stray incident or two. We are living in a communally vitiated atmosphere which makes it possible for people to do or say things which were earlier unthinkable, said Khan, who was a JNU students' union president in the 1990s.

The issue of communal polarisation also led to protests by the CPI(ML) which is the third-largest constituent of the five-party Grand Alliance.

The alliance is helmed by the RJD.