Amid protests seeking a statement from Union Home Minister Amit Shah on December 13th’s security scare, a total of 14 MPs, including one from Rajya Sabha, were suspended on Thursday. The suspensions were on account of alleged “gross misconduct”. Overall, proceedings in both Houses were marred by protests from members of the opposition benches, as concerns continued to echo in both chambers.
Lok Sabha
Thirteen members, including DMK’s Kanimozhi and Congress’ Manickam Tagore, were suspended for the remainder of the session as protests bothered proceedings in the Lower House on Thursday. The House was untimely adjourned three times until it concluded for the day late afternoon.
Though DMK’s S.R. Parthiban was also named and suspended as the 14th Lok Sabha member, the government withdrew his name after Congress MP Karti Chidambaram and former BSP MP Danish Ali pointed out that the DMK MP was not even present in the House and was away in Chennai.
While the Opposition pressed their demand for a statement by Home Minister Amit Shah on the security breach, the treasury sought the issue is not politicised.
Union Minister for Defence Rajnath Singh asked members to collectively reflect on the incident to prevent such occurrences from happening in the future. He urged members to be more cautious in distributing passes to visitors. Members must ensure they are not distributed to chaotic elements, the Defence Minister held.
A similar notion was reiterated by Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Pralhad Joshi. He asked members to rise above politics in addressing the “grave national issue”. Mr. Joshi, however, cautioning that he did not intend to draw comparisons, enumerated that the incident was not a present-day development. He referred to similar incidents in April 1974, July 1974, Nov 1974, and January 9 and 10, 1999. Further, apprising members of the legislative functioning, Mr. Joshi stated that the house was at liberty to deal with the issue at hand as per constitutional procedures for the conduct of business. He added that violations of other nature would be dealt with by appropriate law enforcement agencies.
Mr. Joshi then moved a motion to suspend T.N. Prathapan, Dean Kuriakose, S. Jothimani, Ramya Haridas and Hibi Eden for alleged “misconduct”— all belonging to Congress. The suspensions hold for the remainder of the session.
After a brief adjournment, and amid continuing protests, nine more MPs were suspended. These include Benny Behanan (Congress), V.K. Sreekandan (Congress), Mohammad Jawed (Congress), P.R. Natarajan (CPI-M), Kanimozhi Karunanidhi (DMK), K. Subrahmanyam, S.R. Parthiban (DMK), S. Venkatesan (CPI-M), and Manickam Tagore (Congress).
After the suspensions, the House was adjourned for the day.
Rajya Sabha
Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien was suspended for the remainder of the session for “gross misconduct” and defying the chair. The motion was moved by Leader of the House Piyush Goyal. However, the Trinamool Congress MP refused to leave, inviting a verbal protest from Chair Jagdeep Dhankhar. He held that Mr. O’Brien’s continued presence despite being suspended “handicapped” the proceedings of the House. The Chair deemed it “outrageous”.
The day marred by protests, saw as many as five unscheduled adjournments until it concluded early for the day. Opposition members raised slogans and congregated in the well of the House since the very start of Zero Hour.
Although the Chair invited floor leaders of the parties and the Opposition leader to a meeting in his chamber at 11:30 a.m., Opposition parties boycotted the meeting. “We will continue with our protest till the Home Minister Amit Shah states yesterday’s security breach,” said Congress RS MP and General Secretary (Organisation) K.C. Venugopal.
In other significant developments from the Upper House, it has been learnt that Dr. Manmohan Singh shall remain absent for the Winter Session because of poor health.
(Compiled by Saptaparno Ghosh, Sruthi Darbhamulla, Suchitra Karthikeyan, and Priyali Prakash)
Published - December 14, 2023 06:54 pm IST
