Conflicting instructions were issued by Perak state assembly speaker R Ganesan and legislative assembly secretary Rumaizi Baharin Perak before yesterday's sitting, DAP chief Ngeh Khoo Ham claims.

He said state assemblypersons received a notice before the sitting barring them from bringing computers and video recording devices into the assembly.

Ngeh said he queried Ganesan on this yesterday, to which the latter replied that laptop computers were not banned in the house but was silent about video recording devices.

"I have queried Ganesan (on this). It has been the NONE policy of the state assembly to encourage elected representatives to bring laptops (during sittings, but we are now) prohibited from doing so.

"In fact, the state assembly in 2004 and 2008 budgeted and gave each elected representative a new laptop computer to enable assemblypersons quick access to information," Ngeh ( right ) said in a statement today.

He also claimed that the state government practised double standards by getting its people to record the all of yesterday's proceedings on video.

Painting Pakatan reps in bad light

"I believe it is BN's strategy to use this method to produce material to paint Pakatan Rakyat elected representatives in a bad light," he said.

In the same vein, Ngeh criticised Ganesan and the state government for only allowing "BN-friendly" media organisations unrestricted coverage of the sitting, while confining the others to a room with visual and audio restrictions.

"They could only hear what BN wanted them to hear. The microphones are controlled by BN-employed technicians," he said.

Ngeh's long list of complaints follows the one-day sitting yesterday, which saw BN bulldozing through its RM80 million supplementary budget bill, with limited time allocated for debate.