Gujarat leader of Opposition suspended from Assembly for Statue of Unity comment
Ahmedabad, Feb 20 (IBNS): Leader of Opposition in the Gujarat Assembly Paresh Dhanani was suspended for a day on Wednesday from ongoing budget session for his comments on the Statue of Unity.
“Sardar Patel has been caged in the statue made from scrap,” Hindustan Times quoted Dhanani of the Congress party as saying during question hour.
Inaugurated in October 2018, the 182-meter structure at Kevadiya in central Gujarat is the tallest statue in the world.
Dhanani's comment evoked angry responses from the BJP members. Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani demanded that Dhanani withdraw his statement which he didn't.
Later, the BJP got him suspended from the House for a day with a majority vote.
“I borrowed words only from official website of the Statue of Unity,” the suspended MLA later told reporters.
The Congress party said the BJP did not want to face questions and that was the reason they suspended the Opposition leader.
However. the state's minister Saurabh Patel said no such thing was mentioned in the statue website,
“The website says the agriculture tools from across India were collected, along with soil and water. The iron tools were melted and used in the project. Nowhere the site says that statue was built from scrap,” the minister said, according to Hindustan Times.
Image Credit: Narendra Modi Twitter
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