19 MPs suspended from Rajya Sabha; Opposition says PM is 'afraid'

Seven Members of Parliament from the Trinamool Congress and six from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam were among the 19 MPs who were suspended from Rajya Sabha for the entire week for disrupting the House proceedings.

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The opposition MPs were suspended by Deputy Chairman Harvansh for failing to pay heed to his repeated pleas not to stall the proceedings of the House. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs V Muraleedharan moved a motion to suspend 10 MPs protesting the price rise and GST levy since the start of the monsoon session on July 18.

However, after the motion was adopted by a voice vote, Harivansh called out the names of 19 members who had been suspended for the rest of the week. The Deputy Chairman said the MPs showed "utter disregard" for the House and the Chair's authority. 

Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha, Piyush Goyal, asserted that the decision to suspend 19 opposition MPs was taken with a "heavy heart" and that it was the Opposition and not the government that was running away from a debate in Parliament. He reiterated that the government is ready to discuss the price rise issue once Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman fully recovers from COVID-19.

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However, the Opposition refused to buy the government's argument. Reacting to the suspensions, the Trinamool Congress alleged that the Narendra Modi government had turned Parliament into a 'deep, dark chamber'. Claiming that democracy has been suspended in India, TMC leader Derek O'Brien said that Parliament had been turned into a deep, dark chamber. O'Brien, the leader of the TMC in the Rajya Sabha, claimed that Prime Minister Modi was "afraid" of Parliament.

Besides those from TMC and DMK, three MPs from the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), two from the Communist Party of India-Marxist and one from the Communist Party of India (CPI) were also suspended.

The TMC MPs who were suspended include Sushmita Dev, Dola Sen, Santanu Sen, Mausam Noor, Shanta Chhetri, Nadiumal Haque and Abir Ranjan Biswas.

The DMK MPs who were suspended include Kanimozhi NVN Somu, M Mohamed Abdulla, S Kalyanasundaram, M Shanmugam, N R Elango and R Girirajan.

Other MPs suspended were Ravichandra Vaddiraju, B Lingaiah Yadav and Damodar Rao Divakonda of the TRS, A A Rahim and V Sivadasan of the CPI-M, and Santosh Kumar of the CPI.

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