Lok Sabha on Tuesday was adjourned until 12 noon, minutes after the proceeding began, due to the opposition’s protests over BJP MP Nishikant Dubey’s expunged portion from Monday’s session being re-recorded and run in the late-night bulletin.
The BJP MP had attacked the Congress party on Monday alleging that the party had always taken funds from China and that they should be investigated.
Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, in a letter to the Lok Sabha speaker, called Dubey’s allegations “libellous” and “defamatory”, and demanded that under Rule 380, Dubey’s remarks be expunged in full and that an inquiry be conducted into how such an allegation was permitted to be raised on the record.
Dubey’s remarks were expunged from Parliament records but later, to the surprise of the opposition, restored on the House website late on Monday evening.
To be sure, the expunging of words of any MP from Parliament records and their restoration is entirely the prerogative of the Speaker or Presiding Officer of a House.
Any expunged portion of the proceedings no longer remain in the Parliament records and they cannot be reported by media houses, even if they might have been recorded during the live telecast of the proceedings.
{{/usCountry}}Any expunged portion of the proceedings no longer remain in the Parliament records and they cannot be reported by media houses, even if they might have been recorded during the live telecast of the proceedings.
{{/usCountry}}Dubey on Monday said, “Whenever there was a problem in the country from 2005 to 2014, the Chinese government gave money to the Congress whose FCRA license was canceled by the Indian government… In 2008, they invited both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. In 2016, they were talking to the Chinese during the Doklam crisis… They want to divide India through the Chinese government and journalists... The Government of India should investigate the Chinese funding of the Congress party and close the Congress shop”.
Citing a New York Times latest investigation on the media portal Newsclick’s alleged flow of funds from China, Dubey claimed that the Congress party and some independent journalists have alleged ties with ‘Chinese propaganda’.