Gangtok:Protesting against the way he was marshalled out of the House during a special session of the Sikkim Assembly, former Chief Minister PK Chamling has stated that he was merely raising a point of order to highlight the deviation from rules.
In one of his rare press conferences, Chamling on Wednesday accused Chief Minister P S Tamang of “misleading” the House.
The special one day session was convened on April 10 to pass a government resolution for proposed changes to clauses 4-5, relevant to Sikkim, of the Finance Act 2023.
Chamling, the sole lawmaker of the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), was one of the nine speakers on the resolution.
Later, when Tamang rose to respond to the points raised by the members, Chamling interrupted him and tried to raise a point of order.
Speaker Arun Kumar Upreti asked Chamling to take his seat and promised to allot him additional time to make his point. But as the veteran legislator persisted with his demand, Upreti called in the marshall and three other Assembly staff, who physically lifted Chamling out of the House.
Addressing the press conference held at the SDF Bhawan, Chamling claimed that Tamang “misled” the Assembly while reading out notifications issued during the tenure of the SDF Government.
Chamling lashed out at the state government for not yet filing a petition to change the term “Sikkimese” defined by the Finance Act, but rather changinh it back to its original meaning.
Chamling expressed concern over the changes made to Article 371F and the definition of the term “Sikkimese”.
Chamling claimed that the Special protection and rights granted to the state as per Article 371F have been removed. Now that the domiciles would be there, the special recognition given to the state has gone.
According to Chamling, even the foreigners tag attached to Nepalese of Sikkimese origin has not been removed. It was done only on paper.
However, he claimed that SDF has decided to revisit the merger-agreements-Article 371 F in the interest of the Sikkimese, he said.
