8 MPs from Telangana suspended

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal moved a motion against them when the House met at 2 pm,preceded by two adjournments. Reading the names of the eight members,Bansal proposed that they “be suspended from service of the House for four days beginning from today”. The motion was adopted by a voice-vote.

Normally a government resorts to such a stringent action against opposition members to transact important business. For instance,the then Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee had on August 14,2007,asked P C Thomas of the Indian Federal Democratic Party to leave the House for indiscipline.

He took the action under Rule 373 after Thomas insisted on a statement by the government over the bifurcation of the Palghat division of the Railways to create Salem division in Tamil Nadu even though N N Krishnadas of the CPM had raised the matter.

Way back in the 1980,over 30 people belonging to the Opposition had been suspended for disruption in the wake of the Bofors controversy.

Earlier,the members staged a sit-in in the well,forcing a half-an-hour adjournment. As they continued the protest even after the House reassembled,Francisco Sardinha,who was in the Chair,adjourned the House for the day at 2.30 pm.

Earlier,Sardinha had appealed to the protesting MPs to return to their seats. “Do not hijack the proceedings,” he told them. “I am warning you that I will have to take action… Do not force the Chair to take action,” he said.

Sardinha’s firm posture indicated that the ruling party had its mind made up. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee,according to sources,had already reached out to leaders of other parties,including Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj,Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav,JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav and CPM leader Basudeb Acharia.

A sense of discomfort in the government was visible when senior BJP member Jaswant Singh and CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta took potshots at the ruling party over the conduct of its members. While seeking to raise the issue of defence preparedness,Singh pointed to the Telengana MPs and said: “I cannot compete with that noise. I do no more than appeal to you to direct the government so that we can have a proper discussion on this matter.”

Dasgupta had called the government “absolutely ineffective”. “They cannot even control their party members,” he said,while demanding an all-party meeting on price-rise.

As far the eight MPs are concerned,they have their own compulsions. Facing public ire back home over the Centre’s dilly-dallying over grant of statehood to the Telangana region,their protest can be seen as directed at their voters. TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao and party colleague Vijaya Shanthi have been hijacking the agenda in the Lok Sabha by constantly walking into the well whenever they are present on the Telangana issue. Missing from action today,the two are expected to land in the Capital tomorrow.

When asked if the TRS members too would face identical action if they disrupt the proceedings,sources in the government said: “It depends upon the gravity of the obstruction.”

The Telangana MPs maintained that said they had not indulged in any act of indiscipline as they were only demanding a fulfillment of the poll promise made by the Congress.

Commenting on the suspension,Swaraj said later: “This is an unprecedented and extraordinary incident where the ruling party had to suspend its own members for not allowing the House to function.”

“Never in the history of Parliament has such an event occurred before. But the situation arose as the government did not fulfill its election promise to form Telangana,” she added.

Acharia too called the action unprecedented.