Speaker expunges her remarks in LS

As per PRS LegislativeResearch, while the Lok Sabha clocked in 115 working hours the upper house worked for only 57 hours. But as the winter session comes to a close on Wednesday hopes have been dashed.

Her remarks came in response to a plea by BJD’s Baijayant Panda who said the Congress members should stop protesting in the national interest as he was raising an important question about security.

Soon after the House condoled the death of 10 people in a BSF plane crash yesterday, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge raised concerns over the Speaker’s remarks.

“I did not take name of (any) party…”

Former secretary general of the Lok Sabha P.D.T. Achary told The Hindu that while the Speaker expunging her own remark was a rare occurrence it was not unprecedented. Noting that she did not mention the name of any party while making the remarks, Sumitra today said it was made when members were protesting in the well of the House. “Nobody can question the conduct of the Speaker in the House”, he said. This is one of the rare occasions that the Chair had to expunge his/her own remarks. “I am sorry”, even as some murmurs of disapproval could be heard from the Treasury benches.

The Congress Opposition disrupted the upper house, 55 hours were lost – over court summons to Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice President Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case, the overthrowing of the Chief Minister of the Arunachal Assembly allegedly at the behest of the governor and demands for Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s resignation in connection with the DDCA scam.

He said members had a right to protest and stage a walk out, but they had been raising slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Earlier, when environment minister Prakash Javadekar was speaking about India’s plan to clean the environment and reduce carbon emissions, the Speaker, referring to members disrupting the House, said, “Don’t try to pollute the environment of Parliament”.