Budget Session begins today, suspension of Opposition MPs revoked

A record 146 Opposition MPs, from both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, were suspended during the Winter Session for disrupting proceedings to press their demand for a statement from Home Minister Amit Shah on the Parliament security breach on December 13. While the other MPs were suspended for the remainder of the Winter Session, the suspension of 14 MPs was referred to the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha privileges committees.

The 14 MPs included 11 from the Rajya Sabha: Congress’s Jebi Mather Hisham, L Hanumanthaiah, Neeraj Dangi, Rajmani Patel, Kumar Ketkar and G C Chandrashekhar; CPI’s Binoy Viswam and Sandosh Kumar P; DMK’s M Mohamed Abdulla and CPM’s John Brittas and A A Rahim. The remaining three from the Lok Sabha are: Congress’s K Jayakumar, Abdul Khaleque and Vijay Vasanth.

Earlier in the day, the government said it had asked the presiding officers of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha to revoke the suspension. “Everybody’s suspension will be withdrawn. We have requested the Speaker and the Chairperson on behalf of the government, and they have agreed,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi said.

Setting the stage, the Rajya Sabha privileges committee met and adopted a resolution recommending withdrawal of the suspension. Two weeks ago, the Lok Sabha privileges committee had adopted a similar resolution for revoking the suspension of the three Congress members.

Opposition sources said the MPs had written letters to the privileges committees expressing regret for their action, arguing that the disruptions were not intentional or personal indiscipline.

At the all-party meeting, the government told the Opposition floor leaders that they should implement the decision on barring MPs from bringing placards or similar materials inside the chambers.

Opposition leaders are learnt to have sought discussions on a range of issues, including what they called misuse of the investigative agencies, attack on the federal structure and “overreach” by Governors.

Left MPs Elamaram Kareem and P Sandosh Kumar expressed concern over attempts to “communalise” the polity. Kareem also sought a clarification from the government over remarks by ministers that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which was passed by Parliament in December 2019 but whose rules are still to be framed, would be implemented across the country soon.

The meeting, chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, was attended by Leader of the House in Rajya Sabha Piyush Goyal, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Joshi and his deputies Arjun Ram Meghwal and V Muraleedharan. In attendance from the Opposition were Congress’s Pramod Tiwari and Kodikkunil Suresh, TMC’s Sudip Bandyopadhyay, DMK’s T R Baalu, Shiv Sena’s Rahul Shewale, Samajwadi Party’s S T Hasan, JD(U)’s Ram Nath Thakur and TDP’s Jayadev Galla.

Tiwari said he raised the issue of the “violent attack” on the Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Assam and the state government’s curbs on it. An “unwritten dictatorship” prevails in the country, he said, and accused the central government of misusing probe agencies such as the CBI and ED to target Opposition leaders like Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad.

Suresh said the Congress would try to raise the issue of unemployment, price rise, agrarian distress and the Manipur situation during the session. TMC’s Bandyopadhyay said the Finance Minister should include the pending dues to West Bengal on account of various central schemes in the interim Budget.

SP’s S T Hassan demanded steps to strengthen the Places of Worship Act, 1991, that freezes the status of religious places of worship as they existed on August 15, 1947, and prohibits their conversion while ensuring the maintenance of their religious character. His demand comes in the wake of demands to hand over the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi to the Hindu community.

The session, the last before the Lok Sabha elections, will be a short one. It begins on Wednesday with President Droupadi Murmu’s address to the joint sitting of both Houses – her first in the new Parliament building — and ends on February 9. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will table the interim Budget on Thursday, after which both the Houses will take up discussions on the motion of thanks to the President’s address.

“They have given suggestions, but since this is the last session of the present Lok Sabha, we have said we will give them an opportunity in the next session,” Joshi said.