The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) disrupted the Rajasthan state legislature on Friday by protesting what appears to be a major slip-up by state chief Ashok Gehlot from the Congress Party.
In confusing scenes, Gehlot reportedly started to read from last year's regional budget instead of that for the year to come, before being stopped by his minister, Mahesh Joshi.
House speaker C.P. Joshi had to adjourn the session for half an hour after BJP lawmakers sat in the room's well to protest the oversight.
Hitting out at Gehlot, former BJP state chief Vasundhara Raje alleged that the episode threw light on the state of affairs in Rajasthan. “For 8 minutes, the state chief kept reading the old budget," she pointed out.
"When I was the state chief, I used to repeatedly check and read before presenting the budget. You can imagine how safe the state is in the hands of a state chief who reads out an old budget,” she blasted.
Following the proceedings, BJP regional opposition leader Gulab Chand Kataria alleged that the un-presented 2023 budget - which Gehlot was meant to have read - had subsequently been "leaked" after it was distributed to politicians amid the confusion.
Meanwhile, Gehlot hit back at the accusations: “You (opposition) can point out only if there's a difference between what's written in the budget in my hand and its copies given to the house members. If a page was added to my budget copy by mistake, how does the matter of leaking of budget arise?”