Two former Jharkhand Assembly Speakers and a BJP ally have condemned the BJP’s disruption of the House over the allotment of a room on the premises for MLAs to offer namaz, saying everyone should encourage religious tolerance in these troubled times.

“I would have given a place also to them (BJP members) for reciting the Hanuman Chalisa, though I’m sure they wouldn’t do it (recite the Chalisa),” Inder Singh Namdhari, Jharkhand’s first Assembly Speaker, said at a panel discussion on the subject organised by the state-run Jharkhand Vidhan Sabha TV on Tuesday night.

“They (BJP members) are pursuing the matter with an attitude of nahle pe dahla marna (a Hindi saying meaning outdoing an adversary),” added Namdhari, who was with the BJP before he left the party and contested and won in 2009 as an Independent candidate.

The Jharkhand Assembly has had a namaz room since the state was carved out of Bihar in the year 2000. The BJP suddenly made an issue out of it when on September 2, a day before the current session opened, Speaker Rabindra Nath Mahato issued an order making the allotment official, perhaps feeling the need to do so because the Assembly had a few months ago shifted to a new building.

The BJP picked the matter up as it “does not have any other suitable issue to pursue”, another former Speaker, Shashank Shekhar Bhokta, said at the panel discussion.

Since Monday, BJP lawmakers have been in uproar in the Assembly, reciting the Hanuman Chalisa, singing bhajan-kirtans, chanting “Jai Shri Ram” and “Har Har Mahadev”, and occupying the Well to try and prevent any business until the room allotment is withdrawn.

Namdhari said the Assembly of undivided Bihar had a room for members to offer namaz, and Jharkhand had retained this and all other rules and practices of the parent Assembly.

He said the Muslim MLAs of undivided Bihar had applied for a place to offer the Friday prayers because there was no mosque near the House.

Bhokta, a member of the ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, said at the panel discussion: “The practice (in Jharkhand) continued even when MLAs from the BJP became Speakers; it never became an issue till now.”

“A temple was built within the chief minister’s official residence when (BJP politician) Arjun Munda was chief minister but no one objected.”

Bhokta added: “Even Muslim constables never demanded that mosques be built within the premises of police stations although many of those already housed temples.”

He said everyone needed to show tolerance.

“It’s an old tradition in this country to (give people the) right to observe their respective religious practices,” Lambodar Mahato, an MLA from BJP ally All Jharkhand Students Union, said at the panel discussion with Namdhari and Bhokta.

Namdhari said the channel should have also invited “someone sensible” from the BJP to the discussion so that they could be requested “not to fan communal issues”.

Congress MLA Deepika Pandey Singh told this newspaper: “Youths are worried about employment, not about who’s offering namaz where.”

She expressed frustration that the ruckus was preventing the House from discussing and conducting business.

“People are discussing unemployment and price rise outside while the legislators are doing bhajan-kirtan within the House,” CPIML Liberation MLA Vinod Singh told this newspaper.

On Wednesday, police used water cannons and then their batons as 1,500-odd BJP workers tried to break barricades about 2km from the Assembly as part of a programme to surround the House. Former BJP chief minister Raghubar Das sat on a dharna outside the Assembly.

A PIL has been filed in Jharkhand High Court against the allotment of the room for namaz but is yet to be listed for hearing. Petitioner Bhairav Singh is the prime accused in a mob attack on chief minister Hemant Soren’s convoy in January. He is out on bail.

Additional reporting by Animesh Bisoee