Amid the 50-hour-long relay sit-in protest by the suspended MPs on the Parliament premises, three more Rajya Sabha members — Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Sandeep Kumar Pathak and Sushil Kumar Gupta and Independent legislator Ajit Kumar Bhuyan — were suspended from the House for a week on Thursday.
The 20 suspended RS members are on a relay protest near the Gandhi Statue at the Parliament complex, braving night, heat and rain.
A total of five MPs, including CPI’s Santosh Kumar and AAP’s Sanjay Singh, spent the night near the Gandhi statue at Parliament complex, while TMC’s Dola Sen and Santanu Sen were present at the site till midnight. With authorities not granting permission for a tent, the MPs slept under the sky as a protest against the suspension of 24 MPs, 20 from the Rajya Sabha and four Congress members from the Lok Sabha.
So far 27 MPs of the Opposition have been suspended for “unruly behaviour”.
TMC MP Mausam Noor brought tea for the MPs on Thursday morning and said that the Opposition MPs will not apologise and the protest will continue.
Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh named the three members for holding placards and shouting slogans in the well. Soon Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs V Muraleedharan moved a motion to suspend the three members from the House for the remainder of the week. The motion was passed by a voice vote.
As some Opposition members demanded division of votes, Harivansh then asked the members to go to their seats to allow a division of votes. But the opposition members continued to raise uproar.