NEW DELHI: The Lok Sabha proceedings were washed out on Thursday without transacting any business after repeated adjournments owing to vociferous protests by the Congress-led Opposition, which sought Home Minister Amit Shah’s response on the security breach which had taken place inside the House on December 13.
As many as 13 opposition MPs from the Congress and DMK were suspended by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla for the remainder of the ongoing winter session after he named them for their utter disregard to the chair’s directions while protesting over the security breach.
The suspended MPs are TN Prathapan, Hibi Eden, Dean Kuriakose, Jothi Mani, Ramya Haridas, V K Sreekandan, K Kanimozhi, Manickam Tagore, Mohammad Jawed, K Subramaniam, S Venkatesan, PR Natarajan and Benny Behanan. Earlier in the morning when the Lower House had convened for the day, Speaker Om Birla said that the responsibility of the security of Parliament rested with Parliament Secretariat and even the government could not interfere with it.
He said this after opposition members stormed into the well of the House, demanding Shah’s response on the security breach.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh rose to speak and said that everyone should condemn the incident and the Speaker had already taken action in the matter and issued the necessary directions.
Meanwhile, the Speaker, who had allowed question hour, had to adjourn the House after around 15 minutes as the protests continued. When the House reconvened at 2 pm, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi read out the names of the five Congress MPs who had been suspended from the House for the remaining period of the winter session.
Joshi listed four such incidents of security breach which took place between 1974 and 1999. Joshi said it was appreciable on the part of the Speaker to immediately convene a meeting of all floor leaders after the breach and hear their concerns and suggestions. He said it was the need of the hour that all lawmakers should rise above politics and speak against the breach in one voice, but there were some MPs who habitually created ruckus in the House.
Soon after this, the House was adjourned till 3 pm.
When the Lok Sabha reconvened at 3 pm, Joshi read out the names of nine more MPs, all from the Opposition, who had been suspended from the House. However later in the evening, the suspension of DMK MP SR Parthiban was taken back as he was not present in the House.
The House was adjourned till December 15 soon after the announcement.