20 December,2023 06:06 AM IST | New Delhi | Agencies
Suspended TMC MP Banerjee mimicks presiding officers in an impromptu skit during a protest. Pic/PTI
Opposition lawmakers Tuesday hit out at the government after 49 more Lok Sabha members were suspended from the House, calling Parliament a graveyard of the Constitution and comparing it with the North Korean assembly. The suspension of 49 Lok Sabha MPs came a day after a total of 78 -- 33 from the Lower House and 45 from the Upper House -- lawmakers were suspended from Parliament for disrupting proceedings.
Reacting strongly to the developments, Shiromani Akali Dal MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal said, "The graveyard of the constitution is visible here". "Opposition MPs whose job is to raise questions in Parliament are thrown for doing their job...this is the new India... see it," she said outside Parliament.
Suspended Oppn MPs protest during the Winter session. Pic/PTI
Congress MP Karti Chidambaram said Parliament will soon resemble the North Korean assembly. "We are going to resemble North Korean assembly and only thing missing is synchronised clapping when the PM walks in. This is going to be a token house," he said. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said what is happening is "disgraceful to be very blunt".
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"They have no desire to have a democratic system of parliamentary democracy at work. What they are interested in is to have an Opposition-mukt Lok Sabha. So, we are seeing a situation where we feel there is no respect for parliamentary democracy," he said. Manish Tewari, Congress MP, said Parliament has been totally delegitimised. "This is to lay the framework of passing the most draconian law in parliament which will turn this country into a police state," he said.
As many as 27 questions posed by suspended opposition members of LS were deleted from the list of queries to be asked on Tuesday. Similarly, the names of several suspended MPs were removed from groups of members asking the same question. The name of Hanuman Beniwal, who resigned from Lok Sabha after being elected as a member of the Rajasthan assembly, was also deleted. While two-starred questions asked by Aparupa Poddar of the Trinamool Congress and Ramya Haridas of the Congress were deleted, 25 unstarred questions were also deleted from the list.
A"complete purge" is being executed to ensure the passage of "draconian bills" without any meaningful debate in the new Parliament, the Congress claimed on Tuesday, dubbing it as "âNamocracy' in all its tyranny". Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said this was being done so that the BJP MP "who facilitated the entry of the two intruders" into the Lok Sabha on Dec 13 goes scot-free. "Today at least 50 more INDIA MPs were suspended from the LS alone! A complete purge is being executed so that draconian Bills are passed without any meaningful debate, and so that the BJP MP who facilitated entry of two intruders goes scot-free," he said on X.
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