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EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
NEW DELHI, DEC 8: Spelling fresh trouble for the BJP, eleven of its MPs from Bihar have threatened to resign their Lok Sabha seats if the government went back on its promise of creating the state of Vananchal even as ally Samata Party's MPs walked out of the Lok Sabha protesting against the move.
The MPs' announcement has its share of drama when Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha's name too was included in the list of those threatening to quit. A letter to Prime Minister spelling out their intention and purportedly signed by the MPs and the FM was released to the press but Sinha later clarified that his signature was obtained on the letter through "an unfortunate misrepresentation."
Sinha, however, supported the demand for Vananchal and also introduction of a bill in the current session of Parliament. "As far as the threat of resignation is concerned, I would like to dissociate myself from it," Sinha said.
The letter says "we will be compelled to resign our seats if the bill is not introduced in thecurrent winter session of parliament."
The signatories to the letter included Rita Verma, Abha Mahato, Reet Lal Prasad Verma, Babu Lal Marandi, Karia Munda, Dhirendra Agarwal and Ram Tahal Choudhary.
They said "if creation of Vananchal is delayed, the party will have a tough time in the next elections and the delay would prove suicidal."
Not to be outdone, Samata Party MPs today walked out of the Lok Sabha to register their protest against the creation of Vananchal state.
The Vananchal issue was raised during zero hour by senior BJP MP Rita Verma and 11 other party colleagues who said the people of the region were very agitated about the delay in tabling the bill. "The Vananchal Bill has to be brought to the House in this session", she said amidst noisy support from BJP members from Bihar.
But the demand of the BJP MPs was loudly countered by Prabhunath Singh of the Samata party, who said any division of Bihar would mean the end of Bihar.
An agitated Singh threatened that before any bill to carveup Bihar was brought to the House, the House would see a Bill to break up the country. Yadi Bihar ka batwara karna hai, to pehle desh ke batware ka prastav lana hoga, he declared.
Proceedings in the House were disrupted for some time as Singh and the BJP members indulged in an acrimonious exchange of words, even as P M Sayeed who was in the air tried hard to restore order. Finally, Singh and a few other Samata party members staged a walk-out of the House.
Meanwhile, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M L Khurana assured the House that the bills relating to the creation of the three new states of Vananchal, Chhatisgarh and Uttaranchal will be introduced in the House next week.
Khurana said the matter would be discussed by the Cabinet later this week and next week the bills would be brought to the House. This was despite the Bihar Assembly taking a contrary view on the creation of Vananchal, but this would not be binding on Parliament.
Senior Samata party members said the party itself was not opposedto the creation of Vananchal and that the position taken by Prabhunath Singh was his own. "It is a question of playing to the gallery in Bihar", a senior Samata party member said.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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