Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar on Tuesday took strong exception to TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee mimicking him during opposition MPs’ protest against their suspension from Parliament and called the act an insult to his ‘’background as a farmer’’, his position as a “Jat’’ and presiding officer of the Upper House.
Adjourning the Rajya Sabha, Dhankhar told Congress lawmaker P Chidambaram, ‘’ I had suffered, I tell you. On Instagram, Mr Chidambram, your party put a video which was withdrawn later on. That was shame to me. You used official Twitter handle of the spokesperson to demean me, insult me, insult my background as a farmer, my position as a Jat, insult my position as a Chairman.’’
Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi purportedly filmed the mimic.
The Vice-President said ‘’ the Institution of Chairman has been ravaged and that too by a political party that has gone far so long that a Member of Parliament, a senior one, videographs the other member. For what? ‘’
Dhankhar took a strong exception of the development, terming it “ridiculous and unacceptable”.
He said, “Office of Chairman, Rajya Sabha and Office of Speaker are very different. Political parties will have their cross currents, they will have exchanges, but imagine a senior leader of your party, video graphing another member of another party. Mimicry of the chairman, mimicry of Speaker. How ridiculous, how shameful, how unacceptable.”
The BJP also reacted sharply to Gandhi’s act of filming the suspended TMC MP while he mimicked Dhankhar and said the country will never forget the opposition leader’s act of mocking the vice president.
“Country will remember….When the country’s vice president and the constitutional institution were being mocked, ‘Shahzada’ was standing and making a video… The people of the country will definitely end the arrogance of the arrogant in 2024,” BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said.
Meanwhile, the opposition parties have slammed the Narendra Modi government over suspension of 141 of their MPs. The opposition said the suspension of MPs was like an “undeclared emergency” and accused the Centre of “suspending parliamentary democracy”.
The members were suspended for demanding Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s statement on the December 13 incident of Parliament security breach in which two men entered the country’s most secured premises on passes approved by Mysore BJP MP Pratap Simha and set off smoke canisters.
While 49 MPs were suspended from Lok Sabha on Tuesday, 78 members were suspended on Monday from both the Houses. Fourteen MPs were suspended last week.