New Delhi, July 26: The opposition parties in the Rajya Sabha protested the move to suspend 19 of their MPs on Tuesday by raising slogans like “We want justice” inside the House, forcing the Chair to adjourn the proceedings for the day.
The MPs were suspended for the remaining part of the week for creating ruckus in the well of the House despite repeated warnings by the Chair.
Nineteen opposition Members were suspended from #RajyaSabha for a week for disrupting House proceedings. https://t.co/YZ0YeTr3vT pic.twitter.com/vT75UZfsRp
— IANS (@ians_india) July 26, 2022
After the announcement of suspension by the Chair, the House was adjourned first for 15 minutes and then for one hour as the Opposition MPs didn’t leave the House and continuously protested.
When the House reassembled, the opposition members shouted “We want justice” in unison against their suspension.
“You can suspend us but you cannot silence us. Deplorable situation. Our MPs are trying to flag people’s issues but they are being suspended. For how long will this go on? The sanctity of the Parliament stands heavily compromised,” AITC tweeted.
“With the suspension of Opposition MPs from both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, it is abundantly clear that Modi Sarkar is no mood to allow the opposition to raise real, urgent issues being faced by the people of our country in Parliament,” said Congress leader Jairam Ramesh.
The House witnessed repeated adjournments through out the day amid protests by the opposition demanding discussion over inflation, hike in GST rate and the hooch tragedy in Gujarat.
Citing rules and procedures of the House, Deputy Chairman Harivansh warned the members against displaying placards in the well but in vain.
“It is against the norms, please don’t compel the Chair to use Rule 256. Please don’t force me to name you under Rule 256,” he said a number of times. Later, exercising provisions of Rule 256 in the post lunch session, he decided to suspend the opposition MPs for the remainder of the current week for showing “utter disregard to the House and the authority of the Chair”.
The names of those suspended are: AITC’s Sushmita Dev, Mausam Noor, Shanta Chhetri, Dola Sen, Dr Santanu Sen, Abhi Ranjan Biswas and Nadimul Haque, DMK’s M. Hamamed Abdulla, S. Kalyanasundaram, R. Girranjan, N R Elango, M. Shanmugam, Dr. Kanimozhi and N V N Somu, TRS’s B. Lingaiah Yadav, Ravihandra Vaddiraju and Damodar Rao Divakonda, CPI-M’s A A Rahim and Dr. V. Sivadasan, and CPI’s Sandosh Kumar P.
The decision to suspend the MPs came a day after four Congress members in the Lok Sabha were suspended for the entire Monsoon Session ending August 12 for holding placards inside the house despite warnings by Speaker Om Birla.
Earlier, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge held a meeting of all party MPs to discuss the strategy in the wake of what he called “vindictive harassment of senior Congress leaders by BJP using ED, CBI and other central agencies”. He said that the government must remember that the Congress inherently knows how to counter “oppressive forces”.
With Agency Inputs…
