Mumbai, March 24 (IANS) Five Shiv Sena and four Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators were Thursday suspended from the Maharashtra assembly till Dec 31 for disrupting Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar/'s budget speech a day earlier.

When the assembly session started Thursday, some opposition members again attempted to create a ruckus by shouting slogans.

This prompted state Parliamentary Affairs Minister Harshavardhan Patil to move a resolution seeking suspension of the nine opposition legislators.

Soon thereafter, Speaker Dilip Valse-Patil announced the suspension of the nine legislators.

They are Shiv Sena's Ravindra Waikar, Vinod Ghosalkar, Girish Mahajan, Pratap Sarnaik, Eknath Shinde, and the BJP's Sardar Tara Singh, Vijay Shivtare, Harish Pimpale and Vijay Deshmukh.

Shortly afterwards, the entire opposition resorted to slogan shouting and accused the ruling Congress-Nationalist Congress Party's Democratic Front government of "muzzling the voice of democracy".

The suspended members will not be allowed to attend the assembly till Dec 31.

BJP's Leader of Opposition Eknath Khadse alleged that the government has not released money for the constituencies of the opposition legislators and diverted all the funds to ruling party legislators.

This is the third session in a row that opposition legislators have been suspended for various reasons.

On Wednesday, the opposition had created pandemonium during of the budget presentation by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, who also hold the finance portfolio.