Anguished over disruptions in the working of the Rajya Sabha, Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu has cancelled a dinner he was to host for members of the Upper House on Wednesday even as BJP MP Manoj Tiwari wrote to lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan asking for salary cuts for MPs when no constructive work happens in Parliament.
According to sources, preparations for Naidu’s dinner were completed last week and invitation cards were kept ready with some of them also dispatched. Naidu had spoken to the President, the Prime Minister, the leader of the House, the leader of Opposition and floor leaders of various parties whom he had invited.
Naidu had expected the House proceedings would normalise on Tuesday.
At a meeting with the floor leaders of various parties in his chamber, the RS Chairman conveyed anguish over the ongoing stalemate in the House and informed them of his decision to cancel the dinner. Naidu was of the view that it would not be appropriate to go ahead with the dinner with the House not functioning for over two weeks, the sources said.
Naidu had on many occasions maintained in the Rajya Sabha that banking issues need to be discussed and that the Government too has agreed. law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Vijay Goel had said that the Government had since day one stated that it is prepared for any discussion.
Naidu had planned an Andhra Pradesh special dinner, with specialist cooks called from the state. It is learnt that he also refused to inaugurate a badminton tournament for Members of Parliament at the Constitution Club last week.
For his part, in his letter addressed to Mahajan, Tiwari wrote that he is pained by the ‘unprecedented chaos in the House resulting in loss of valuable time of the Parliament.’ He called for ‘No Work No Pay’ system to be enforced. “I propose deducting the salary of MPs for their failure to engage in any constructive work,” he wrote highlighting that public representatives are ‘running away from their responsibilities’.