Tripura opposition stages walkout over speaker

Agartala: The opposition Congress staged a walkout from the Tripura assembly on Monday alleging partisan role of the speaker.
Leader of the opposition, Sudip Roy Barman, alleged that speaker Ramendra Chandra Debnath allowed chief whip of the ruling CPM, Samir Debsarkar, to interrupt senior Congress legislator Ratan Lal Nath when the latter was pointing out a serious discrepancy in the official figure of conviction rate of criminal cases in the state.
In February, 2015, the chief minister had informed the house that the conviction rate in IPC cases had increased to 20.6% in 2014. But on Monday, the law minister said the exact figure was only 13.59%, which, he claimed, was a serious manipulation of facts.
The case records reveal that the conviction rate has been hovering around 10% in the past three years, Ratan Lal Nath stated in the house.
CPM chief whip Debsarkar and a few other members of the treasury bench were reportedly interrupting Nath, but the speaker did not stop them. But when the opposition leader raised a supplementary question on the issue, the speaker moved on to the next question, Nath alleged.
All the opposition leaders staged a protest in the well, demanding that the opposition leader be allowed to ask his supplementary queries and the CM must explain the discrepancies in the conviction figure.
The opposition members walked out from the house for 15 minutes.
Later, joining the house, Ratan Lal Nath said Tripura has the lowest conviction rate in the region after Assam.
However, the state government has been unnecessarily manipulating the facts to cover up the failure of police in investigating the cases and the poor performance of public prosecutors in the court.
According to the case history, in 2014, of 7,143 IPC cases, conviction was done only in 736 cases (over 11%). In 2013, out of 6,753 cases, conviction was in only in 673 cases (less than 10%). In 2012, out of 5,796 cases conviction was made in only 612 (around 11%), said Nath.