Friday, July 23, 2010

Shoes and pots thrown at Indian state assembly

More than 60 MPs were suspended from a state assembly in India yesterday amid ugly scenes that saw the speaker pelted with shoes, seats thrown and a flower-pot-wielding woman legislator dragged away by security.

The legislature in the eastern state of Bihar has been in uproar for several days, with opposition members demanding the resignation of the chief minister over an alleged corruption scandal. On Tuesday, members on both sides of the house stormed the well of the chamber, overturned tables and threw chairs at one another.



The chaos continued yesterday, with one lawmaker expressing his anger by flinging his sandals at the speaker, while others wrestled each other on the floor. One member, Jyoti Singh, responded to being ejected from the chamber by picking up large flower pots decorating the entrance to the assembly and hurling them at security personnel.

She was eventually dragged away by three female marshals. Speaker Udai Narain Choudhry suspended 67 members – almost the entire opposition – for the remainder of the assembly’s current session, which runs until Friday.

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