MUMBAI: After a pandemonium in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly during the monsoon session today, twelve Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs were suspended for one year, for 'misbehaving' with presiding officer Bhaskar Jadhav in the speaker's chamber.

A motion of suspension moved by state Parliamentary Affairs Minister Anil Parab was passed by a voice vote after which Parab said during the period of suspension, the 12 MLA's will not be allowed to enter the Legislature premises in Mumbai and Nagpur.

The 12 suspended BJP members are, Ashish Shelar, Abhimanyu Pawar, Sanjay Kute, Girish Mahajan, Yogesh Sagar, Jay Kumar Rawat, Narayan Kuche, Atul Bhatkhalkar, Parag Alavani, Harish Pimpale, Bunty Bhangdia and Ram Satpute.

BJP leaders have however overwhelmingly rejected the charges calling them false and maintaining that Jadhav's account of the incident was one-sided.

BJP leader and Leader of Opposition in the assembly, Devendra Fadnavis said, "This is a false allegation and an attempt to reduce the numbers of opposition benches because we exposed the government's falsehood on the OBC quota in local bodies. We will boycott the house proceedings."

Talking of the incident Fadnavis said the facts were being twisted and it was not the BJP members that had abused the presiding officer but Shiv Sena MLAs who had used abusive words. 

The house had to be adjourned several times during the day of the session. The first time it was adjourned for 10 minutes in between the pandemonium over state's resolution urging the Centre to provide 2011 census data to enable the State Backward Class Commission to prepare an empirical data of the OBC population, in a bid to restore political reservations for its members in local bodies the house was adjourned for 10 minutes. 

Some BJP members, including Girish Mahajan and Sanjay Kute, climbed the Speaker's podium and argued with the Chair.  State minister Nawab Malik alleged that the BJP members had 'gheraoed' Jadhav in the speaker's chamber and used abusive words and even claimed that Fadnavis also broke his own mike.

Later, when it reassembled, and Malik and Shiv Sena member Sunil Prabhu demanded that action be taken against the opposition members for their behaviour with Jadhav, it resulted in another round of accusations and counter-accusations and the house was first adjourned for 15 minutes and later again for 30 minutes.