For causing a scene and staging protests in the House over Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification as an MP, up to 16 of 17 Congress MLAs in Gujarat were suspended from the Gujarat Assembly on Monday for the rest of the Budget session until March 29. Imran Khedawala, Geniben Thakor, and Amrtutji Thakor, three MLAs from the major opposition party, were removed from the House by marshals while they were sitting in the well of the chamber and refused to return to their seats despite repeated requests from Speaker Shankar Chaudhary.
On Monday, all 16 of Congress’ MLAs aside from Anant Patel were present in the House.
Amit Chavda, the leader of the Congress Legislative Party, demanded a discussion on Rahul Gandhi’s expulsion from the Lok Sabha as soon as the question period started. He claimed that Gandhi had been “silenced by the BJP government” for raising problems that affected people.
Gandhi was disqualified as an MP after a court in Surat convicted him on March 23 in a 2019 criminal defamation case over his “Modi surname” remark and sentenced him to jail for two years.
On Monday, all MLAs of Congress entered the Gujarat Assembly wearing black clothes as a mark of protest against Gandhi’s disqualification.
Speaker Shankar Chaudhary asked Chavda to sit down, saying no discussion is allowed during question hour and asked him to raise the issue later.
At this point, other MLAs of Congress rushed near the well and started raising slogans saying “Modi-Adani Bhai Bhai”. They also showed placards and photos linking PM Narendra Modi and Gautam Adani.
When all the 16 MLAs refused to stop sloganeering and trooped into the well, Chaudhary warned the Opposition against wasting “people’s time”.
As the MLAs stayed put, the Speaker suspended them for a day and asked marshals to evict those lawmakers who refused to go out and continued to sit in the well area.
After the end of the question hour, state Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs minister Rushikesh Patel slammed Congress for the chaos and moved a motion to suspend all of them till the end of the ongoing Budget session on March 29.
“Despite knowing that the subject they were raising was not of Gujarat, these Congress members created chaos and raised slogans as a pre-planned strategy. They misled the people of Gujarat through this. Thus, we request you to suspend them till the end of the session,” said Patel.
Ministers Balwantsinh Rajput and Raghavji Patel also supported Patel’s proposal for a harsher punishment. The motion moved by Patel was unanimously passed after Aam Aadmi Party MLAs did not raise any objection.
In the Bihar assembly furious protests from members of the ruling ‘Mahagathbandhan’ of which his party is also a part this protests erupted after Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification from Lok Sabha on Monday.
‘Mahagathbandhan’ (grand alliance) members had made their intentions clear when they reached the assembly with black bands wrapped around their arms and heads and their hands clutching posters with images of Gandhi and captions screaming “democracy and Constitution in danger”.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), which had raised many eyebrows last week by staying away from a demonstration against Gandhi’s conviction, was also participating this time.
