141 MPs suspended in 3 days; imp. bills introduced & passed in Opposition-less Parliament
In the third batch of suspensions in three days, on the recommendation of the government, 49 more MPs—most of them, like earlier, from the Opposition INDIA coalition—were suspended from the Lok Sabha.
With this, the number of suspended MPs, combining the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, stands at 141, which comprises approximately 62 per cent of the Opposition. On December 14, 14 MPs were suspended (13 from the Lok Sabha and one from the Rajya Sabha). Yesterday, 78 MPs were suspended (33 from the Lok Sabha and 45 from the Rajya Sabha), which was a record in Indian parliamentary history. And today, 49 were suspended.
All the suspensions are for demanding statements from the Prime Minister and the Home Minister on the security breach on December 13 that allowed two people with smoke canisters to enter the Lok Sabha and jump from the gallery onto the MPs’ seating area with smoke emanating from the canisters.
The government, instead of giving statements inside Parliament, which has been a practice when any major incident happens while a session is in progress, continues to duck the demands. The home minister, a few days back, spoke on the breach at a conclave called by a media house but has refused to give a statement inside. Similarly, the prime minister has spoken outside but not to the MPs inside Parliament.
And, in the midst of all this, Home Minister Amit Shah introduced in the Lok Sabha the three important bills to replace the IPC, CrPC and Evidence Act. An Opposition-less house is perhaps easier to manoeuvre.
Also, the government passed The Telecommunications Bill, 2023—a draconian move that allows the Union government to take control of any telecommunication services or network, to direct any message from any person can be intercepted or detained, and to force any person to disclose these messages in intelligible format to the concerned officer.
