MLAs chat away in tribute to departed leaders in Assembly

 
The House met just for an hour from 10.50 am. Even as CM Yeddyurappa and leaders of the Opposition parties were paying tributes to leaders who passed away in the recent past, as also to those who lost their lives in the heavy rains and floods that devastated north Karnataka districts, MLAs including ministers were seen in huddles talking animatedly.

While Congress MLA D K Shivakumar, JD (S) MLAs Balakrishna and Zameer Khan were engaged in discussing something very interesting to them, and on the other side of the aisle so were Ministers Umesh Katti, Bommai and Savadi. Speaker Bopaiah even warned the members to maintain silence as the obituary references were being made.

Jagadish Shettar, till recently the Presiding Officer of the House and now Rural Development and Panchayati Raj minister, occupied one of the seats in the front row of the Treasury benches. Shobha Karandlaje, Shettar’s predecessor in RDPR sat in the last row, symbolic of her recent demotion from the position of the second most important member of the State Cabinet.

The House paid tributes to former legislators D T Jayakumar, Gopal Mukund Kanade, E Nanje Gowda, L Nagaraju, Sharanappa Bhairy and former Union Minister B Shankaranand. The Council too paid tributes to them and  Yakshagana exponent Keremane Mahabala Hegde and T S Satyan, eminent photojournalist who died on Sunday.

Paying condolences to the departed, Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa said 229 people lost their lives in the floods and many families had lost their homes with 6.55 lakh houses dwellling being damaged. The rehabilitation work required was enormous and the government would treat it as a challenge, he added.

Leader of the Opposition S Siddaramaiah drew the government’s attention to complaints regarding paltry compensation in the flood-hit areas, urging relaxation of rules to help the affected.