A protest noisier than ever, strategic manoeuvring of placards to obstruct visuals of ministers, and an MP lending a helping hand to those shouting their lungs out by giving them lozenges. All this during question hour Monday, with more following during zero hour, set the stage for the suspension of 25 Congress MPs from the Lok Sabha. As soon as Speaker Sumitra Mahajan began question hour, Congress MPs Ravneet Singh Bittu, Sushmita Dev, Gaurav Gogoi, Rajeev Satav, Ranjeet Ranjan and Deepender Hooda stormed the well, their placards carrying messages such as “Bhrashtachariyon ka saath chhodo, Pradhan Mantri chuppi todo” and “Shameless government, voiceless PM”. [related-post] Ravneet, carrying one of the largest placards, took a strategic position where his placard flashed across the giant TV screens each time the cameras focused on the chair. As if on cue, Satav started changing his location and successfully blocked Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju with his placard when the minister was responding to a question about purchase of aircraft. Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge, and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, were apparently debating strategy while Sushmita, Gaurav Gogoi and Deepender were conducting the sloganeering. “Mann ki baat bandh karo, kaam ki baat shuru karo,” Hooda shouted. “Kaley dhan ka kya hua? 15 lakh ka kya hua?” As she decided to go ahead with question hour, Mahajan made repeated appeals to the Congress MPs — naming many of them a few times — and asked them to put away the placards. “You are giving a wrong message to the country,” she said. As the din rose, a few MPs from the CPM, the RJD, the JD(U) and the Samajwadi Party could be seen joining the Congress MPs in the well. Trinamool and NCP MPs did not troop in but stood at their seats all through. At one point, NCP MP Supriya Sule came to the aid of protesting MPs who appeared to be losing a bit of steam. Armed with sachets of lozenges, she quietly made her way through the melee to Gogoi and handed him a pack. As a few MPs wondered about its contents, Sule could be seen gesturing that it was meant for the throat. Within minutes, she was distributing more. Around 11.23 am, Rahul Gandhi entered the House and joined the sloganeering, standing at his seat and thumping the desk. A little later, he was engaged in a lengthy discussion with Kamal Nath. After the Speaker adjourned the House, the agitation resumed in zero hour. Hooda rolled a placard into a cone to shout through it right in front of the Speaker’s chair. Gogoi and Ravneet were facing the Speaker. Ranjeet Ranjan banged the Speaker’s table and ruffled a few papers while Sushmita chanted slogans. The group had also taken over the place kept for the chair of the Lok Sabha secretary general. “I had told all of you in a meeting not to show placards and not to come to the well. I request you again,” Mahajan said after zero hour concluded. With the noise continuing, she started reading out names. “I am naming all of you. Please keep all your posters outside, go to your seats. I am requesting their leaders to see to it that I am naming all of them.” It took a while for the MPs to realise she was reading out their names for action. Showing solidarity with the Congress MPs, the TMC’s Sudip Bandopadhyay told the Speaker a solution must be reached. “You are repeatedly talking about the rules. Somewhere we also want to share your sentiments. To make parliamentary democratic system more powerful, I would request you not to take these steps of taking names and suspending from the House,” he said. Mahajan asked if Sudip could guarantee that these disruptions would not happen. “No, Madam,” he admitted. “I can give a guarantee for my own party.” The CPM’s P Karunakaran made the same plea but by then the Speaker had made up her mind. “By persistently and wilfully obstructing the business of the House. grave disorder is being occasioned. I am, therefore, constrained to name you under rule 374A,” she read out.
