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Tarashankar Sahay in New Delhi
The Lok Sabha passed the vote-on-account amid pandemonium by Opposition members on Tuesday. The House was adjourned for the day after that.
Earlier, Congress and other Opposition parties agreed to co-operate in passing the vote-on-account for the General and Railway Budgets to avert a constitutional crisis.
This follows a meeting Speaker G M C Balayogi had with Opposition leaders Sonia Gandhi, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Somnath Chatterjee.
Balayogi asked them to ensure passage of the vote-on-account to enable the government to meet the expenditure for the first quarter of the next financial year.
Without passage of the vote-on-account before March 31 in Parliament, the government would not have been able to draw money from The Consolidated Fund of India for government expenditure from April 1.
The Lok Sabha had been adjourned on Tuesday till 1200 hours by Balayogi as Opposition members rushed to the well shouting, 'We want the government to resign'.
The furore started as soon as senior Congress member Buta Singh entered the House. Bharatiya Janata Party members heckled him, shouting, `Buta chor machaye shor'.
The Speaker asked the members to restore order in the House but they did not listen to him. Thereafter, Balayogi adjourned the House.
The Rajya Sabha witnessed acrimonious scenes for the sixth day running leading to the adjournment of the House without transacting any legislative business.
The House session, which was adjourned for five hours when it assembled for question hour, hardly lasted for 10 minutes after it reassembled at 1600 hours, as determined Opposition members disrupted proceedings.
The only time the Opposition members were silent was when Deputy chairperson Najma Heptullah read out a message from President K R Narayanan thanking the House for adopting the motion of thanks on his address to joint sitting of Parliament.
Opposition and BJP members clashed outside Parliament, too, with BJP members wearing black jackets listing alleged Congress scandals with white ink.
The urea and sugar scams, during P V Narasimha Rao tenure as prime minister, were highlighted.
The BJP members taunted their Opposition counterparts, urging them to read what was written on the jackets.
For a change, security personnel did not separate the rivals.
Later, BJP members, including Sisram Ravi, claimed that they would distribute booklets which contained a list of scams of the Congress Government.
(With additional inputs from news agencies)
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