The suspension of the Congress leader in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, prompted members of the Opposition parties belonging to the Indian National Development, Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) to not only walk out of the House in protest on Friday but also boycott the customary tea party hosted by Speaker Om Birla for floor leaders at the end of every session.
While Opposition leaders, including Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, marched towards the statue of B.R. Ambedkar on the Parliament premises in protest, DMK leader in the Lok Sabha T.R. Baalu wrote to the Speaker to reconsider his decision to suspend Mr. Chowdhury.
Senior Congress leader Manish Tewari said Mr. Chowdhry’s suspension “was a fit case to go to the Supreme Court” against the move.
Mr. Chowdhury was suspended from the Lok Sabha on Thursday evening after a resolution for “gross misconduct” was passed. Members on the Treasury benches had taken objection to some of the expressions he used for Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his speech on the no-confidence motion.
While the Speaker had expunged Mr. Chowdhury’s remarks, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi moved a resolution to suspend the Congress leader and refer the matter to the Privileges Committee. Mr. Chowdhury would remain suspended until such time the panel dealing with parliamentary privileges submits its report.
“For the first time, the matter is being sent to the privileges committee after suspending the member so that the member cannot participate in Business Advisory Committee. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury heads the Public Accounts Committee that scrutinises CAG reports and the governments wants that he cannot participate. To keep him away, he has been suspended in this manner,” Mr. Kharge said.
Mr. Chowdhury, on the other hand, accused the government of bullying the Opposition with a brute majority in the House. He said he had used metaphors to explain a ruler’s “silence” and being “blind” to the suffering of the people. “I am not only ready to have an open debate with Pralhad Joshi or anyone in the BJP. If I have used any word in the wrong context in people’s eyes, I am ready to quit politics,” he said.
Possibly a first in recent times for the Leader of the single largest Opposition party to be suspended, the move reflects the breakdown of relations and informal channels of dialogue between the Opposition and the Treasury Benches.
On Thursday, during his reply to the no-confidence motion, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had claimed that the Opposition was never ready to acknowledge him as the leader of the House and often tried to disrupt his speeches.
Before that, Opposition and the Treasury Benches fought the expunction of a contentious statement of Mr. Gandhi, made during the no-confidence debate, regarding Bharat Mata.
At a press conference on Friday, Mr. Gandhi said the security situation was so bad that he had never seen anything like it in the past 19 years of his political life. “That is why I said ‘Bharat Mata’ has been murdered in Manipur. For the first time, the words ‘Bharat Mata’ have been expunged from Parliament. It is an insult to those words,” he said.
Hitting back, Mr. Joshi said the term ‘Bharat Mata’ has not been expunged but only the unparliamentary references to it.“ “Unparliamentary words are selected as per a rule book and there is nothing arbitrary about it. It appears from whatever statements he [Rahul Gandhi] has made today that he has lost his mental balance,” the minister said.
