Amid the political storm over the overall tally of suspended MPs in last few days rising to 141, Parliament on Tuesday was rocked by a new controversy involving Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee’s mimicry of Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar.
What irked Dhankar even more was that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had purportedly filmed the mimickry out of his smartphone and the video went viral.
Dhankar slammed Serampore MP Banerjee for his “shameful” act and noted that the “personal attack” was an insult of his farmer family background and of the Jat community he comes from.
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Banerjee was among a group of MPs protesting on the steps of Makar Dwar — one of the entrances of the new parliament building — when he started mimicking Dhankhar.
The ruling BJP was quick to take advantage of the viral video, terming the mimicry of the Vice President of India and its filming a highly deplorable act.
Prahlad Joshi, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, highlighted in Rajya Sabha that the mimicry incident happened within the premises of Parliament and was therefore highly condemnable. Congress and TMC must apologise in the upper house for insulting the Rajya Sabha Chairman, he added.
Earlier in the day, in his remarks in Rajya Sabha, Dhankhar addressed former Home Minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram. “Chidambaram, you are a very senior member. Imagine what I felt when a senior leader of your party, an MP, was filming an act making fun of me, a personal attack,” he said.
And that too by a party that ruled the country for so long, Dhankhar said, adding, “I am very pained.”
Dhankar said that the Congress official Instagram handle had posted the video, but later took it down. “This is shameful. You used an official handle to humiliate me for my farmer background, to humiliate me as a Jat, to humiliate my position. This is very serious,” he said.
Dhankhar is from Rajasthan’s Jhunjhunu district and had an illustrious career in law before he entered politics.
He has earlier been with the Janata Dal and the Congress. He had also earlier served as a Union Minister in former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar’s government.
Prior to his election as Vice-President, Dhankhar was West Bengal Governor, during which he had frequent run-ins and heated exchanges with the Trinamool Congress government led by Mamata Banerjee.
49 Lok Sabha MPs Suspended
Meanwhile, Lok Sabha on Tuesday suspended 49 MPs, taking the overall tally of suspended MPs to 141 in the ongoing ruckus over security breach in Parliament last Wednesday.
Among the prominent MPs who got suspended on Tuesday include Shashi Tharoor (Congress); Manish Tewari (Congress) ; Supriya Sule ( NCP); Karti Chidambaram (Congress) and Farooq Abdullah (National Conference); Danish Ali (Bahujan Samaj Party); Sudip Bandyopadhyay ( Trinamool Congress) and Rajeev Ranjan Singh (Janata Dal (united)).
After Tuesday’s action, 48 per cent of total opposition MPs in Lok Sabha now stand suspended.
Currently, there are 522 MPs in Lok Sabha, of which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has 290 MPs, while the National Democratic Alliance (NDA, consisting of BJP, plus allies) has 324 MPs.
Of the 141 MPs suspended over the last one week, as many as 46 were from Rajya Sabha and the rest from Lok Sabha.
In Rajya Sabha, 32 per cent of the total opposition MPs stand suspended since last Thursday.
Currently, the total strength of the Rajya Sabha is 238. Of this BJP has 93 MPs, while the remaining 145 are members from opposition parties. In Rajya Sabha, 99 Opposition MPs remained in the House, as of Tuesday.