NEW DELHI, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- Chaos erupted Thursday in India's lower house of Parliament after lawmakers, including one using pepper spray, protested plans to divide a state, members said.
Three legislators from the Lok Sabha, the lower house, reportedly were hospitalized while Congress Party lawmakers were introducing legislation that would divide the southern state of Andhra Pradesh and create the state of Telangana, with Hyderabad as its capital, from the division, Britain's Financial Times reported.
Besides the pepper spray-wielding lawmaker, the Times said another legislator from Andhra Pradesh opposed to the bill was accused of waving a knife, but he said it was a microphone he had broken.
The Times reported a computer was also thrown.
Seventeen legislators from Andhra Pradesh were suspended from Parliament for their involvement in the melee.
"This has shamed us," Meira Kumar, speaker of the Lok Sabha, said. "Our parliamentary democracy is admired around the world. What has happened is a blot."
The Times reported critics as saying the push to create Telangana state months ahead of a national election was a ploy to increase support of the Congress Party in the region even as the party was losing support elsewhere.
Telangana is one of several regions where residents have demanded they be given their own states to recognize ethnic differences or because of allegations of neglect or discrimination in the state in which they currently belong.
