Nearly 60 Rajya Sabha members belonging to the INDIA bloc on Tuesday submitted a no confidence motion to the Rajya Sabha Secretary General against Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar, accusing him of running the House in a “partisan manner”.

Congress general secretary in-charge of Communications, Jairam Ramesh, in a post on X wrote, “All parties belonging to the INDIA group have had no option but to formally submit a no-confidence motion against the learned Chairman of the Rajya Sabha for the extremely ‘partisan manner’ in which he has been conducting the proceedings of the Council of States.”

Stating that it was a very “painful” decision for the INDIA parties to take, Ramesh, who is the Congress MP in Rajya Sabha, said but in the interests of parliamentary democracy they took this step.“The motion has just been submitted to the Secretary General of the Rajya Sabha,” he added.

Talking to reporters at the Parliament premises, senior Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said, “All the parties of the INDIA bloc have decided to bring a no-confidence motion against the Chairman. That’s why everyone signed (the notice), our party (AAP) also signed.”

In response to a question on how many Opposition MPs signed the notice, Singh said, “The notice has been submitted. So far, 60 people have signed the notice.”

Reacting to the motion against the Chairman of the Upper House, Trinamool Congress (TMC) Rajya Sabha MP Sushmita Dev said, “The no-confidence motion moved by the Opposition today is also allowed in the Parliamentary procedure.”

“In pursuit of our constitutional rights in order to protect constitutional parliamentary democracy, we have given in our resolution of no-confidence,” said another TMC MP Sagarika Ghose to a news agency.

Attacking the BJP-led government at the Centre, she said, “The Modi government is murdering Parliament. The Opposition is not being allowed to raise people’s issues.”

It may be mentioned that the Opposition has been demanding a discussion over the issue related to billionaire businessman Gautam Adani since the beginning of the Winter Session of Parliament. They also staged protests at the Parliament premises over the matter.

Adani was indicted by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) and US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for alleged bribery. The Adani Group denied the allegations made by the US DoJ and the US SEC and said all possible legal recourse will be sought.