RS adjourned over suspension of 12 MPs
NEW DELHI: The Rajya Sabha was adjourned minutes after the House convened on Thursday as Opposition members protested against chairman M Venkaiah Naidu’s refusal to allow Mallikarjun Kharge, the leader of the Opposition, to raise the issue of the suspension of 12 members.
The Opposition members rose in protest as soon as Naidu referred to the suspension and reiterated the 12 have “not expressed remorse”.
Naidu said the House has not transacted business since the beginning of the Winter Session on Monday. “This is the fourth sitting of the first session of this august House in the 75th year of our hard-fought Independence. The House could not transact any business during the last three days.”
As the Opposition members kept pushing for Kharge to be given a chance to speak, Naidu said, “…Since I cannot go public with my anguish in any other way, the only platform to share my anguish and thoughts is to speak in the House. Some of the respected leaders and members of this august House, in their wisdom, chose to describe the suspension of 12 members as ‘undemocratic’. I have struggled to understand if there was any justification in that kind of narrative being propagated but could not.”
The Opposition parties have closed ranks and called the suspension unfair.
They have maintained the members were suspended without following proper procedure. The government has stuck to its stand that the action will be reconsidered only when the suspended members apologise in the House.
“While calling this suspension as undemocratic both within and outside the House, not even a word is being said about the reasons given for the suspension, the disdainful conduct of some members during the last session, which I have categorically called as ‘acts of sacrilege’ on the last day of the last session,” Naidu said.
“…I am deeply pained to know from media reports of categorical refusals to express any regret for the acts of misconduct during the last session that led to this round of suspensions. Then what is the way forward?”
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday met the 12 Rajya Sabha MPs from the opposition parties who were suspended from the ongoing winter session of Parliament.
The 12 suspended MPs sat on ‘dharna’ (sit-in demonstration) demanding revocation of their suspension from the House during the Winter session of the Parliament.
The Wayanad MP also staged a protest at the Gandhi statue inside Parliament premises demanding revocation of the suspension.
The suspension came after Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Pralhad Joshi on Monday wrote a letter to Rajya Sabha chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, who is the Vice President, for shocking violence on the last day of the Monsoon Session.