Rahul Gandhi-Anurag Thakur row: When privilege motions are moved against a prime minister

Two rules relate to the concept of parliamentary privilege, which are certain rights conferred to MPs for conducting business. There is no codified list of the exact privileges, but it includes the right of free expression in the course of Parliamentary debates, so that MPs are not liable to court proceedings over it.

A privilege motion can be raised by any member, and admitted by the Chairman. After which, they can refer it to the Privileges Committee.

A look at some privilege motions moved against Prime Ministers going back to the first NDA government:

MAY 2002: Then Congress chief whip Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi moved a privilege motion against then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee saying that Vajpayee, while seeking to clarify a controversy about a public speech made by him in Goa in context of the Gujarat riots, had interpolated a word and hence “misled” the Lok Sabha.

In the House, Vajpayee said: ‘What I said about Islam is as follows… Wherever such Muslims live, they tend not to mingle with others; instead of propagating their ideas in a peaceful manner, they want to spread their faith by resorting to terror and threats.’ Dasmunsi claimed that the video recording of Vajpayee’s speech in Goa showed the word ‘such’ had not been used before the word ‘Muslims’, and by this interpolation, an attempt was made to alter the meaning of the sentence.

Speaker Manohar Joshi rejected the privilege motion after Vajpayee accepted including the word. In his clarification, Vajpayee, however, emphasised that “the spirit of his speech” had implied what he had stated in the Lok Sabha: that there were two types of Islam, one “tolerant” and the other “jihadi”. The PM further said that he meant no disrespect to Islam.

The Congress accepted the Speaker’s order, while claiming “moral victory”.

MARCH 2011: The BJP moved a privilege motion against then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, accusing him of “misleading” the House in the cash-for-vote scam by claiming MPs were not bribed during the July 2008 trust vote against his government, despite a parliamentary panel observing that money had changed hands. The motion was moved by Sushma Swaraj.

The Manmohan Singh government faced a no-confidence motion after the Left parties withdrew support over India approaching the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Three BJP MPs – Ashok Argal (Morena), Faggan Singh Kulaste (Mandla) and Mahavir Bhagora (Salumber) – accused Samajwadi Party (SP) MP Amar Singh of offering them bribes to vote in favour of the UPA. Subsequently, a joint parliamentary panel found no evidence against Amar Singh and exonerated him of the charges.

The Speaker rejected the privilege motion.

NOVEMBER 2013: Former Union minister and ex-Congress leader Natwar Singh moved a privilege motion against then PM Manmohan Singh, accusing his government of “leaking” the Justice Pathak committee report into findings of a UN-appointed panel in the oil-for-food programme in Iraq during the Saddam Hussein regime, in which Natwar Singh’s son Jagat was named.

The Justice Pathak committee report states that Natwar and his son had misused their position in helping Jagat’s friend Andaleeb Sehgal and Aditya Khanna, their relative, bag three oil contracts from the UN-sanctioned Saddam regime. Sehgal and Khanna, in turn, passed the contracts on to Swiss oil company Masefield AG which drew the oil and paid them a commission.

The Speaker rejected the motion.

JULY 2018: Mallikarjun Kharge, then the Congress leader in the Lok Sabha and now Congress president, moved a privilege motion against PM Modi and then Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman over their comments on the price of Rafale jets, claiming they were being imported at a high cost by the UPA government. “The Prime Minister has, along with the Defence Minister, deliberately misled the House. It is, therefore, requested that this notice of breach of privilege be accepted and referred to the privilege committee for further proceedings,” the notice said.

The Speaker accepted the motion, but the matter never came up before the Privileges Committee.

FEBRUARY 2021: MPs of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (now Bharat Rashtra Samithi) moved a privilege motion against PM Modi over his comments on the passage of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, splitting the state into Andhra and Telangana. “The statement attempts to show the Parliament Houses in the most bad and contemptuous manner, denigrating and demeaning the procedures and proceedings of the House and its functioning,” the notice said.

The motion was never taken up by the Privileges Committee.

MARCH 2023: Senior Congress leader K C Venugopal moved a privilege motion against PM Modi over his alleged “insult” to the Nehru family. “The remarks prima facie made in a mocking manner are not only disgraceful but also insulting and defamatory vis-a-vis the members of Nehru family particularly Smt. Sonia Gandhi and Shri Rahul Gandhi who are Members of Lok Sabha,” the notice read. Modi had questioned why Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi had not taken up the Nehru surname.

The Privileges Committee never took up the matter.