Wednesday, 20 December 2023 | PNS | DEHRADUN
The Lok Sabha Secretariat issued circular on the suspension of 141 Members of Parliament for the winter session, barring their entry into the parliament chamber, lobby and gallery. The suspended MPs include 95 members of Lok Sabha and 46 from Rajya Sabha. As per the circular, the suspended MPs would not be allowed to attend parliamentary committee meetings during the period of suspension. Besides, none of the items of the parliamentary agenda would have names of the suspended MPs and they are barred from participating in voting held in the parliamentary committees. Plus, they will not be paid daily allowances for the period of their suspension. Notably, 78 MPs were suspended on Monday and never before in the country’s parliamentary history so many MPs were suspended on a single day. With the ruling party and the opposition having locked horns on the parliament security breach issue and subsequent suspension of MPs for disrupting parliament proceedings, the Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and leaders of the constituents of the INDIA bloc termed the suspension as amounting to throttling democratic voice and trampling democratic norms. The ruling BJP, on the other hand, robustly defended the suspension, saying that the opposition MPs had poured insult on the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the chairman of the Rajya Sabha in a manner that is outside the etiquette of parliamentary behaviour.
