Mumbai: Amid high-voltage drama in the Maharashtra legislature, 12 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators were suspended for a year over the alleged abusive language used against the presiding officer, BhaskarJadhav, and misconduct in the state Assembly. The BJP denied the allegations and said the action was taken with an intention to reduce the party’s strength on the floor of the assembly.The suspended legislators are AshishShelar, GirishMahajan, AtulBhatkhalkar, YogeshSagar, ParagAlavani, Sanjay Kute, Harish Pimple, Ram Satpute, Jaykumar Gore, BuntyBhangdiya, AbhimanyuPawar and Narayan Kuche. They won’t be able to enter the legislature premises during the suspension.

State parliamentary affairs minister Anil Parab moved the proposal, which was passed through a voice vote by the ruling parties with a comfortable majority. Leader of opposition DevendraFadnavis admitted to using of objectionable language against the presiding officer, but denied use of abusive language. He said they have apologised to Jadhav for his unruly behaviour. He alleged the ruling parties have used the incident to reduce the number of opposition legislators in the state Assembly.

Both the ruling and opposition benches were involved in a heated argument on Monday after a resolution was moved to seek empirical data from the Centre to provide political reservation to Other Backward Classes (OBC) in local body elections. Food and civil supplies minister ChhaganBhujbal said the Centre had conducted Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) and the OBC reservation issue would be resolved, if the Centre provided it to the state. He also said the erstwhile DevendraFadnavis government too tried but failed to acquire the data. Fadnavis said the resolution is unlikely to give desired results as the Supreme Court in its order specifically mentioned collecting empirical data and the state was wasting time. The resolution was passed in the pandemonium following which a few Opposition legislators reached up to the chair of the speaker and tried to snatch the mike and the mace. Jadhav was presiding over the House proceedings.Later, the BJP legislators reportedly used abusive language against the presiding officer in the speaker’s cabin. Jadhav said, “I have never seen such behaviour of legislators in my legislative career of 36 years. The BJP legislators tried to corner me and used abusive language in the cabin. I requested Fadnavis, who was also present in the cabin, to ask their legislators to calm down but he refused.”