The Kerala Finance Minister stopped reading the 2015-16 state budget after being barely five minutes into his job amidst rarely witnessed spectacle in which the Speaker was not allowed inside his chamber.
The charged-up Opposition, which had spent the previous night along with the ruling front in the Assembly Complex, clambered on to the Speaker's dais and toppled his chair onto the well of the House around 9 am.
A large-scale scuffle ensued when the watch and ward formed a human wall on either side and Opposition members engaged the staff physically.
Through the melee, the minister went through the motion of technically reading the budget papers and tabling it, complying with the Constitutional requirement.
Ruling coalition members congratulated the minister after presenting a record-breaking 13th budget, and he was safely escorted back into an ante-room immediately thereafter.
Meanwhile, three MLAs collapsed in the House after a wave of sustained protests inside, and they were stretchered out for medical treatment.
Outside the Assembly complex, more than 3,000 protesters belonging to the Left front and the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha occupied all roads, separated from a safe distance since both are arch political rivals and threw up its challenges of a different nature to the police.
Tear gas shells were fired and water cannons used at PMG Junction, the war front of the Opposition CPM supporters in their hundreds.
Tension prevailed both inside the Assembly Complex and outside of it at the time of writing this.