Samajwadi Party members were protesting over electrification of villages in Uttar Pradesh.
Rajya Sabha today saw bitter war of words between Samajwadi Party members and power minister Piyush Goyal over the issue of electrification of villages in Uttar Pradesh, with the former staging a walkout expressing dissatisfaction with the minister's reply.
Chairman Hamid Ansari had to intervene several times to seek the members' cooperation in adopting restraint on the use of language and not 'monopolise' the Question Hour proceedings.
The sharp exchanges took place during the Question Hour with Samajwadi Party's Naresh Agrawal asking Mr Goyal to spell out how many villages in Uttar Pradesh were still unelectrified.
Mr Goyal, in his written reply said 1,529 villages remained unelectrified in UP till April 1, 2015 while electrification works in 1,356 villages have been completed till July 17, 2016 and the remaining ones to be electrified before May 2018.
However, Mr Agrawal said only 173 villages remained unelectrified as per the data, which was "wrong" and accused the Minister of defaming the state government.
To this, Mr Goyal said the Samajwadi Party member was mixing up the data pertaining to electrification and intensive electrification of villages. He said the figures quoted by him are those provided by the state government itself and not of the Centre, which has accepted the data provided by the state.
The Samajwadi Party members expressed dissatisfaction with the minister's reply, saying his "presentation is wrong" and staged a walkout from the House in protest.
As Samajwadi Party members insisted with their statement that the minister was giving a "wrong" reply, Mr Ansari said "You cannot do grandstanding in the House".
During the proceedings, Mr Ansari had to intervene several times on the use of certain words by Mr Agrawal and his colleague Neeraj Shekhar, which he termed as "unparliamentary" and asked them to refrain from using them. Mr Goyal and Union Ministers Uma Bharti and Nitin Gadkari also strongly objected to the use of such words.
"I am compelled to draw your attention to the need to conduct Question Hour fairly so that every member gets a chance and you do not monopolise the Question Hour, otherwise you are going to be patently unfair to your own colleagues. If the answer is wrong or incomplete, then there is a procedure and you give it in writing," Mr Ansari told the members.