History repeats itself after a decade

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Monday’s suspension of MLAs T V Rajesh and James Mathew was the tenth such incident in the history of the Kerala Assembly. The first occurred 41 years ago. And by staging a sit-in inside the House, Rajesh and James Mathew also broke another rule, that suspended MLAs may not enter the House.C B C Warrier, A V Aryan, E M George, T M Meethiyan and N Prabhakara Thandar of the Opposition were among the first to be suspended from the Kerala Assembly. That was on January 29, 1970. Speaker D Damodaran Potti suspended the five for repeatedly disrupting Assembly procedures.Thirteen years later - on March 28, 1983 - M V Raghavan, Kodiyeri Balakrishnan and Koliyakode N Krishnan Nair, then in Opposition, were suspended following a ruckus over alleged anomalies in the public distribution system. The very next day, three more Opposition members - K J George, K Moosakutty and K P Raman - got themselves suspended for attempting to enter the Assembly with their suspended colleagues.On July 25, 1984, P G Janardhanan was suspended for repeatedly challenging the Speaker’s Ruling.The next suspension occurred when Varkala Radhakrishnan was Speaker - on June 87,1987. Alleging irregularities in the elections to the Periyar Co-operative Society, M V Raghavan - by then a part of the UDF - moved towards the Treasury Benches and attempted to squeeze the voters’ list into the pocket of the then Cooperation Minister T K Ramakrishnan. Raghavan was suspended following the incident.On March 16, 1988, M A Kuttappan and T M Sundaram were suspended for repeatedly expressing their dissatisfaction over the Minister’s reply to a submission by O Bharathan. CPM’s E P Jayarajan, A Kanaran, K P Mammu Master and V Kesavan were suspended on October 7, 1991, for creating a ruckus in the House over the police blocking MLAs who were syndicate members of the Cochin University of Science and Technology.CPM’s A Padmakumar and A Kanaran faced the music on February 9,1993, following protests over denial of permission for an adjournment motion. And on October 18, 2001, CPM’s M V Jayarajan, Raju Abraham and CPI’s P S Supal were suspended for manhandling K B Ganesh Kumar.