December 20, 2023
NEW DELHI – The Lok Sabha on Tuesday suspended 49 more opposition MPs, including Supriya Sule, Farooq Abdullah, Shashi Tharoor, Danish Ali, Karti Chidambaram and Sudip Bandhopadhyay, following ruckus over the Parliament security breach incident.
This takes the total number of suspensions form both Houses of Parliament to 141.
The opposition members were demanding a statement from Union Home Minister Amit Shah on the security breach incident, wherein two men entered Lok Sabha on December 13 on the visitors’ passes issued by a BJP MP and set off smoke canisters inside the House.
The suspended MPs raised slogans of “PM sadan mein aao. Grih mantri istifa do (Prime minister, come to the House. Home Minister resign).”
Reacting to the latest round of suspensions, Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) does not have faith in the parliamentary system.
“It is nothing but anarchy inside the Parliament. They (BJP) do not have an iota of faith in the parliamentary system in our country,” he said.
Former BJP ally Shiromani Akali Dal MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal said the government “wants to make the new Parliament a graveyard of democracy”.
“I have no words. What did they think before constructing this new Parliament building? They want to make this the graveyard of democracy…You have thrown out the entire opposition. No action has been taken against the MP who issued the passes (to the accused). A new rule is being set for the new Parliament – have sleeping pills and come here as you are not allowed to open your mouth and ask questions…” she said.
Speaker Om Birla had said any security-related incident in the House comes under the purview of the Lok Sabha secretariat, and there was no need for the government to intervene.
“The government cannot intervene in (responsibilities of) the Lok Sabha secretariat. We will not allow that either,” he said last week when one Rajya Sabha and 13 Lok Sabha MPs were suspended.