Rajat Sharma, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of India TV.
Parliament On Tuesday, 49 more opposition MPs were suspended. Including these, a total of 141 opposition MPs have been suspended so far in both the houses. Those suspended on Tuesday include Dr. Farooq Abdullah, Supriya Sule, Manish Tiwari, Dimple Yadav, Sudeep Bandyopadhyay. 78 MPs were suspended on Monday. These include Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Surjewala, K. C. Venugopal, Adhir Ranjan Choudhary, Pramod Tiwari, Ram Gopal Yadav, Kanimozhi, Gaurav Gogoi, Dayanidhi Maran and Sogata Roy. All these MPs were suspended for the remaining days of the winter session. In fact, the opposition is creating ruckus demanding discussion on the breach in Parliament security. The opposition is adamant on the statement of Home Minister Amit Shah regarding the breach in the security of Parliament. Opposition parties say that the Prime Minister and the Home Minister are ignoring parliamentary traditions and giving statements outside Parliament on serious issues like breach in the security of Parliament, whereas as per tradition, when the session is going on, the government should not discuss such issues. Should first express his views in the Parliament. Since many important bills of the government are pending, the government wants to pass all these bills as soon as possible and the opposition is not ready to give a walkover to the government, that is why members of the opposition parties reached both the houses on Monday with placards. As soon as the House proceedings began, MPs from opposition parties started raising slogans.
The Speaker in the Lok Sabha and the Chairman in the Rajya Sabha repeatedly tried to convince the MPs and warned by name, but when there was no impact on the attitude of the opposition MPs, 33 MPs from the Lok Sabha and 45 from the Rajya Sabha were suspended and ultimately both were suspended. The proceedings of the Houses had to be adjourned for the day. The suspension of such a large number of MPs from the opposition parties is really unfortunate, but let me remind those MPs from the opposition parties who are saying that this has never happened before in parliamentary history, that in 1989, when Rajiv Gandhi was in power, The MPs of the opposition parties were demanding presentation of the Thakkar Commission report on the assassination of Indira Gandhi in the House. There was an uproar regarding this very thing. At that time, 63 Lok Sabha MPs were suspended in one day. At that time also I had said that this action against the opposition parties was wrong. Even today I am saying that this action is not good for a healthy democracy but the government alone is not responsible for this. It is not right to blame only the Speaker or the Chairman. MPs from opposition parties came with placards, raised slogans, created ruckus in the middle of the House and did not listen to the Chairman. After this the government got a chance to demand his suspension. BJP wove a net and the MPs of the opposition parties happily jumped into the net and got trapped. They did not understand that this action would cause more political loss to the opposition because of the meeting being held in Delhi by the opposition India Alliance. Firstly, suspension of such a large number of MPs will derail the agenda of the meeting.
Opposition alliance: Pressure on Congress increases
A meeting of top leaders of about 28 opposition parties was held at Ashoka Hotel in Delhi on Tuesday. In this meeting Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjan Kharge, Sharad Pawar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav, Arvind Kejriwal, Mamta Banerjee, M.K. Leaders like Stalin, Uddhav Thackeray, Farooq Abdullah, etc. arrived. The meeting will mainly discuss the seat distribution policy. A day before the meeting, Mamata Banerjee said that who will be the leader of the opposition alliance, who will be the face of the Prime Minister, this will be decided after the election results. As far as seat distribution is concerned, the emphasis will be on fielding one candidate for each seat from the opposition. Lalu Yadav said in his familiar style that all the parties are united, everyone is reaching Delhi, everyone together will overthrow the Modi government. All the leaders of the alliance of opposition parties are assuming that they will fight together. Modi can be defeated only together but no one is ready to tell whose face will be against Modi? Who will be the leader of the alliance? There is only one answer to this that the name of the leader will be decided after the elections. But who will contest on how many seats? This decision will have to be taken before the elections but this too is difficult. There is little hope that something will be decided unanimously because in the previous three meetings, seat sharing could not be discussed because at that time Congress had won the elections in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka, hence Congress’s claim was strong. The allies were not ready at that time. Now Congress has lost badly in three states, hence the position of Congress is weak. Now Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal, Nitish Kumar, Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray will talk about giving minimum seats to Congress in their respective states. Leaders like Akhilesh Yadav will ask for more seats from Congress in those states where Congress is strong. Now the pressure of alliance is on Congress. And the future of the anti-Modi front will depend on how much Congress succumbs to this pressure. (Rajat Sharma)
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