The opposition parties on Wednesday expressed unhappiness when the Assembly broke its tradition to debate and vote on the budget of important departments by not discussing the annual budget and relegating it to a secondary position behind the transport department.

Opposition legislators alleged that the precedence was broken just to shield RJD chief Lalu Prasad's elder son and health minister Tej Pratap, who is uncomfortable in replying in the House. Tej, in fact, was missing from the House when his department's budget issue was taken up.

The significance of this departure could be understood by the fact that the budget of the health department is of Rs 8,235 crore while that of the transport department is of just Rs 56 crore.

Speaker Vijay Kumar Chaudhary announced the beginning of the debate on the transport department and allotted speaking time to each of the political parties in the House as per their numerical strength.

The process also entails taking up of cut-motion moved by opposition members on the budget of departments and then passing them through the guillotine method by stopping the debate and passing the budgets at one go.

Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, Prem Kumar, immediately stood up and pointed out: "It was the first time in the history of the Assembly that health was being guillotined. This is because we have a minister (Tej Pratap) who cannot speak or reply to the questions. He is being shielded by the government."

Prem also asserted that given the importance of the department, the NDA legislators would speak on the subject of health and discuss the deficiencies, scams and needs pervading it.

This led to din and verbal volleys were exchanged between the treasury and opposition benches. NDA legislators spoke on health, while ruling alliance legislators spoke on transport.

The same issue also came up in the legislative council. Leader of the opposition in the Legislative Council Sushil Kumar Modi on Wednesday took a dig at health minister Tej Pratap for not attending the Council on a regular basis.

"The minister says he wants to learn but is not attending the Council regularly still he is not attending the meeting of the house regularly. If road construction department minister (Tejaswi) can come to the House every day, why can't his brother (Tej Pratap) do the same? I would urge the road construction department minister to ask his brother to come to the House regularly and participate in the debate, so that he could learn effectively," Modi said.

Modi made this comment following a reply made by cooperative department minister Alok Kumar Mehta on a question raised on appointment of pharmacists by the health department. The question was raised by MLC Kedar Nath Pandey and Alok replied in place of Tej.

"The cooperative department minister can read out the answer on behalf of the health minister but what about the supplementary questions? The health minister must be personally present in the House to reply to the questions pertaining to his department," Modi added.