Leader of Opposition Atishi and AAP leader Atishi.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Leader of Opposition Atishi and other AAP MLAs were marshalled out of the Delhi Assembly on Wednesday following a heated exchange between them and BJP members over the authenticity of a so-called British-era "phansi ghar" (execution room) on the House premises.
Speaker Vijender Gupta said the structure, renovated and inaugurated in 2022 by then chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, was actually a "tiffin room" and not a site of colonial executions.
Minister Kapil Mishra accused the previous AAP government of "tampering with history" by projecting a false narrative. "They spent crores turning a tiffin room into a fake execution site, insulting our martyrs and misleading people," he said.
AAP MLA Sanjeev Jha, however, defended the room's historical significance, arguing that many such execution sites were never officially recorded.
"Historians have differing views on such places. In the 1912 map of this building, that is the only double-storey structure consistent with a hanging chamber,” he said.
Jha warned against "whitewashing British tyranny" in an attempt to target Kejriwal and urged that materials from the site be examined by the Archaeological Survey of India.
As the altercation between the treasury and opposition benches escalated, the speaker ordered Atishi and other AAP MLAs to be removed from the House.