By IANS,
New Delhi : Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee Tuesday accepted the resignation of five Janata Dal-United (JD-U) MPs from Bihar who resigned to protest the attacks on north Indians in Mumbai by activists of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS).
The five MPs are Prabhunath Singh, Rajiv Ranjan Singh ‘Lalan’, Kailash Baitha, Meena Singh and George Fernandes. The party has seven Lok Sabha MPs, including one from Uttar Pradesh and one from Lakshadweep.
The MPs had Friday handed over their resignations to P.D.T. Acharya, the Lok Sabha secretary general. Chatterjee, who was discahrged from the the Army Research and Referral Hospital Saturday following a bout of bronchopneumonia, was handed over the resignations Monday.
Announcing their resignation, the JD-U leaders had alleged that people were playing “vote bank politics” over the attacks in Mumbai and that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had become “inactive” and was working under the pressure of central minister Sharad Pawar, leader of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
The NCP and the Congress lead the ruling coalition in Maharashtra. They have been accused of not doing enough to contain last month’s violence by the MNS activists against non-Maharashtrians, particularly those from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
A youth from Bihar was killed last month when MNS activists disrupted a railway recruitment examination in Mumbai. Suspected MNS activists also lynched a labourer from Uttar Pradesh on a suburban train late last month.