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7 Congress MPs suspended amid Parliament ruckus
The move came two days after Speaker Om Birla warned both the treasury and the opposition benches for entering the Well of the House.
The Lok Sabha, on the basis of a voice vote, suspended on Thursday seven Congress members for disrupting proceedings of the Lower House of Parliament during the second half of the ongoing Budget Session that began Monday. The suspension is to last for the remaining duration of the ongoing session.
The move came two days after Speaker Om Birla warned both the treasury and the opposition benches for entering the Well of the House.
The suspension of members from the House is rare, although not unprecedented.
The seven suspended Congress MPs are Gaurav Gogoi (Kaliabor, Assam), Maickam Tagore (Virudhunagar, Tamil Nadu); Gurjeet Singh Aujla (Amritsar, Punjab), TN Prathapan (Thrissur, Kerala); Behanan Benny (Chalakudy, Kerala), Rajmohan Unnithan (Kasaragod,Kerala) and Dean Kuriakose (Idukki, Kerala).
This is the first such suspension in the 17th Lok Sabha.
The drastic action may be part of the government’s effort to get business done in the Lok Sabha, which has seen a series of disruptions, and not passed or discussed any legislations after reconvening, analysts said. However, it could well lead to more disruptions, with the Congress as well as other opposition parties seeing the suspension as disproportionate. The Congress, and other opposition parties, have been vocal in their demand for an immediate discussion on the communal riots in Delhi. The government has offered a discussion after Holi (March 10), but the Opposition isn’t open to this.
The Congress has 52 representatives in the 543-member Lower House and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 303.
The immediate trigger for the suspension came ahead of the third adjournment of the Lok Sabha on Thursday. Rajasthan MP Hanuman Beniwal, a member of the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party, a BJP ally, made a comment about the Gandhi family and the spread of novel coronavirus (Covid-19) in the country. He wanted the Gandhis to undergo tests for coronavirus, saying 15 Italian tourists to India have already tested positive (actually, 16 have), referring to Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s Italian roots.
BJP’s Rama Devi, who was in the Chair, continued to run the proceedings of the House, but Congress MPs intensified their sloganeering. “Suspend the MP, Modi sarkar shame, shame,” they shouted.
Congress’s Kaliabor MP, Gaurav Gogoi, was seen throwing papers kept on the Lok Sabha Speaker’s table while the Mineral Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2020, was being passed.
Soon, the Chair adjourned the House till 3 pm.
As soon as the Lok Sabha reassembled at 3 pm, BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi, who was in the Chair — Speaker Om Birla skipped the House proceedings for the second consecutive day as he is upset with repeated disruptions by the Opposition — named the seven Congress members for their “unruly behaviour”.
Once a Chair names a member, the person cannot attend the House proceedings on that day.
However, parliamentary affairs minister Prahlad Joshi immediately moved a motion to suspend these Congress members from the House for the remaining period of the Budget Session. The motion was passed by a voice vote amid loud protests by the opposition members.
“...that this House having taken serious note of gross misconduct of these members’ utter disregard to the House and authority of the Chair and having been named by the Speaker resolve that these members be suspended from the service of the House from the remainder of the session,” the motion read.
The members have been suspended under Rule 374 (A), which says that a member can “be suspended from the service of the House for a period not exceeding the remainder of the session” for disregarding “the authority of the Chair or abusing the rules of the House by persistently and wilfully obstructing business”.
Lekhi asked the seven Congress members to leave the Lok Sabha chambers immediately and then adjourned the House for the day.
The Congress alleged that the suspension was a “dictatorial decision” by the government aimed at weakening the Opposition’s voice ahead of a debate over last week’s Delhi violence.Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said it was a “government decision” and the Speaker was not involved.
“What happened today is a tale of embarrassment in the history of Parliament,” he told reporters soon after the suspension of the MPs.
He asserted that the Congress members had done nothing wrong, and claimed that the decision was “motivated by revenge politics”. Chowdhury alleged that the suspension was an attempt to weaken the party in the House as the government fears a discussion on the Delhi violence in Parliament.
Gogoi, who was among the suspended MPs, said, “Suspend us for a year, but discuss Delhi riots and heal the wounds of the people.”
However, the BJP welcomed the move and termed “unprecedented” the conduct of some Congress members in the Lok Sabha. Parliamentary affairs minister Joshi said his party has requested the Speaker to set up a panel to look into the continuous “indiscipline” by Congress members.
“Snatching papers from the Speaker’s table is utmost disrespect to the Chair. We condemn this,” he told reporters.
“We will seek termination of the member’s membership. What the Congress did in Lok Sabha showed their utmost disrespect to the Chair,” he said, refraining from naming anyone.
Constitutional expert and former Lok Sabha secretary general PDT Achary said suspensions have taken place in the past too. “Some kind of protests have always taken place in the House. There is a provision of summary suspension when the Speaker names the members. But it has never gone beyond suspension. In the past, talks between the government and Opposition would eventually result in the suspension being revoked,” he said.
Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat said the “unruly behaviour” of the Congress MPs was “unprecedented” and it would have shocked the country’s founding fathers.
Trinamool Congress leader Sudip Bandopadhyay said, “In my long innings in Parliament, I have seen many such cases of the Chair suspending a member from the House. I have also seen that later the member regrets his decision and the suspension is withdrawn. We will appeal to the Speaker on revoking the suspension.”
In the 16th Lok Sabha, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan suspended 25 Congress members for five days for obstructing the proceedings of the House during the Monsoon Session in 2015.
She also suspended 45 members from the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) for repeatedly disrupting the House over their demands for a proposed dam on the Cauvery river and a special category status to Andhra Pradesh, respectively, during the Winter Session in 2019.
In 2016, Mahajan suspended the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) member from Punjab Bhagwant Mann for the Winter Session after a Lok Sabha panel found him guilty of video recording Parliament’s security processes.
Mahajan’s predecessor Meira Kumar suspended 18 Lok Sabha members from Andhra Pradesh for the Winter Session in 2014 for creating a ruckus in the House over the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and creation of a separate state of Telangana.
