Representative image of the West Bengal Assembly.
Credit: PTI Photo
Kolkata: The BJP staged a walk-out of the West Bengal assembly on Friday, alleging insult to economist and party MLA Ashok Lahiri, after Finance Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya uttered the word “humpty dumpty” while commenting on an earlier remark of the legislator about the state budget.
Catching on Lahiri's words describing the state budget as nothing but "humpty dumpty", Bhattacharya said, "I don't know whether, despite being an economist, Ashok Lahiri reads in Bengali and writes in English."
Reciting the nursery rhyme, she then went on to state, "You say that our government failed to bring about any development in the last 15 years, and that we presented a humpty dumpty budget. In saying so, you misled the House."
In the middle of Bhattacharya’s speech, BJP legislators, led by Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, stood up and left the House, raising slogans claiming she had insulted Lahiri's reputation and standing.
Slogans like “shame, shame” and “won’t tolerate insult to Bengalis” filled the air of the assembly portico, where the BJP MLAs continued their protest.
Both Lahiri and Bhattacharya seemed to have borrowed the portmanteau rhyme from West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who on February 1 described the Union Budget as “humpty dumpty”.
“This is a humpty dumpty budget and full of lies. It deprives all sections of society including women, youths, students and backward communities,” the CM had said.
Without referring directly to Banerjee’s statement, Bhattacharya took a potshot at Lahiri during her response to the BJP leader’s statement in the assembly.
"You know very well that instead of our people-centric budget, the Union Budget was itself a humpty dumpty budget having no direction," she said.
Both Lahiri and Adhikari earlier said the state budget was like an election pamphlet of the ruling TMC, containing promises with no clarity on the sources of monetary allocation for the announced welfare schemes.
The schemes were like old wine in a new bottle, with the announcements amounting to rechristening some of the previous projects of the state government, which had been discontinued, they argued.
Speaking to reporters after the ruckus in the House, Lahiri said, “Well scripted sarcasms are always welcome in parliamentary democracy. But here, they stoop to levels of casting slurs and meting out personal attacks instead of indulging in substantive and meaningful discussions. They were made in poor taste, and were indecent and uncivilised.”
Lahiri alleged that the finance minister resorted to irrelevant and unwarranted attacks, after he sought details of the welfare schemes announced in the interim budget.
“I referred to the 94 state-run schemes in my speech and asked the government for details. The House must know the source of funds for these schemes, their structure and how the state plans to stop embezzlement of that money. If they claim to work for ‘ma-mati-manush’, then why not elaborate,” the economist said.
Adhikari said he had asked Lahiri to contest the state polls in 2021, and was sorry for his predicament in the House.
“The government won’t apologise for what it said, but as a senior member of this House, I tender my apology to you for the ignominy you suffered,” Adhikari said.
The LoP later claimed that the TMC “disliked” Lahiri since he poked holes in the budget and “exposed its lies”.
“They attacked him for full 10 minutes like barbarians. They dislike him since he exposed the hollowness of the budget, and uncovered how this government has destroyed the state’s economy,” he said.
Responding to the allegations, Bhattacharya said: “If we have done nothing for the people of Bengal, then why have they elected Mamata Banerjee as their chief minister three times in a row, and about to elect her for the fourth time?”
People have elected the TMC to power time and again because “we enjoy the blessings of ‘maa’ (mother), we carry the fragrance of the ‘mati’ (earth) and have always stood beside ‘manush’ (the masses),” Bhattacharya added, drawing on her party’s ‘maa-mati-manush’ rhetoric.