NE NEWS SERVICE
NEW DELHI, JULY 26
Nineteen opposition MPs, including six from the DMK and seven from the TMC, were suspended on Tuesday from attending the sitting of the Rajya Sabha till Friday for disrupting the proceedings of the House.
The opposition MPs, who stalled the proceedings since the start of the monsoon session of Parliament on July 18 over price rise and the levy of the GST on daily essentials, entered the Well of the House shouting slogans.
Deputy Chairman Harivansh repeatedly asked them to return to their seats but when they refused, he asked the treasury benches to move a motion for their suspension.
Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs V Muraleedharan moved a motion to suspend 10 MPs from the sitting of the House for the remainder of the week for their “misconduct” by showing “utter disregard to the House and authority of the chair”.
But when Harivansh put the motion to vote, he read out the names of 19 members.
The motion was carried by a voice vote. When some opposition MPs demanded a division of votes, the chair said he would do so if the members returned to their seats and the House was brought to order.
With the MPs refusing to budge, he said it seems they are not interested in the division and declared that the motion has been adopted.
The suspended MPs refused to leave, squatting on the floor of the House, leading to three adjournments — first for 15 minutes by Harivansh, then for an hour and finally, for the day by Bhubaneswar Kalita, who was in the chair.
While seven of the suspended MPs belonged to the Trinamool Congress (TMC), six were from the DMK, three from the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), two from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and one from the Communist Party of India (CPI).
Sushmita Dev, Mausam Noor, Shanta Chhetri, Dola Sen, Santanu Sen, Abir Ranjan Biswas and Nadimul Haque of the TMC were suspended.
DMK’s M Mohamed Abdulla, Kanimozhi NVN Somu, M Shanmugam, S Kalyanasundaram, R Girirajan and N R Elango were also suspended.
B Lingaiah Yadav, Ravichandra Vaddiraju and Damodar Rao Divakonda (TRS), V Sivadasan and A A Rahim (CPI-M) and Santosh Kumar (CPI) were the other MPs who were suspended.
Harivansh said the MPs were suspended for showing “utter disregard” to the House and the authority of the chair.
Earlier in the day, while the proceedings were adjourned during the Zero Hour without a single issue being taken up, Harivansh conducted the Question Hour in the midst of slogan-shouting by the opposition MPs from the Well.
This is the highest number of MPs suspended in one go. Earlier, 12 opposition members were suspended in November last year, as some of them had climbed on the table, flung papers and damaged property.
As the Rajya Sabha resumed after the second adjournment, the opposition members continued shouting slogans from the Well, ignoring Kalita’s pleas.
Kalita asked the suspended members to leave the House and others to return to their respective seats to take up the official business.
However, the opposition members continued with their protest at the Well of the House, following which Kalita adjourned the proceedings for the day.
