Chairs and tables were smashed, microphones wrenched off and used as missiles by opposition Trinamool Congress and treasury bench members in the West Bengal assembly on Thursday.

This was after TC chief Mamta Banerjee was stopped from going to Singur for a party programme organised against handover of land to the Tatas for their car project.

Opposition members traded blows with treasury bench members with the destruction soon spreading to the lobby after the TC chief arrived there.

The house had earlier taken up a no-confidence motion moved jointly by the Trinamool Congress and Congress.

Policemen were caught off-guard by the violence as TC members shouted slogans against the Buddhadeb Bhattacharya government for 'stifling democracy and gagging the voice of the opposition'.

Broken furniture and assembly papers lay strewn all around the lobby after the rampage.

"This unprecedented incident is a black day for democracy in the state and has lowered the prestige and dignity of parliamentary democracy," Speaker H A Halim said.

To give the people an opportunity to assess the damage and destruction in the house, the assembly would be thrown open for two days from Friday from 10 am to 4 pm, he said.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist condemned the ransacking of property in the West Bengal assembly by TC legistors, saying it was an attack on democracy.

"The Trinamool Congress has ransacked the property of the assembly in an unprecedented fascist act, which was aimed at putting obstacles in the functioning of democratic institutions. Are they fit to be MLAs? Those who had elected them should ponder," CPI-M state secretary Biman Bose told reporters.