Seeking to steal a march over Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar-led Janta Dal-United announced on Thursday that its five Lok Sabha members from Bihar will resign on Friday to protest the attacks on North Indians in Maharashtra.
BJP patriarch Vajpayee and Lok Sabha Speaker Chatterjee, the senior-most and the only two ten-term MPs in the 14th Lok Sabha, will not be contesting the general elections this time for different reasons.
A day after his angry outburst against some MPs for disrupting Lok Sabha proceedings, a regretful Speaker Somnath Chatterjee today withdrew his critical remarks, saying he had made these in "little frustration".
Instead of blaming politicians and parties, Indians must empower their elected representatives and bureaucracies to meet national challenges by making critical investments in leadership. One of the chief aims of Indian foreign policy is to establish the country as a great global power. It is no secret, though, that much of this battle must be won at home.
Karat and CPI-M MP P K Biju are in Gujarat to meet the victims of atrocities on Dalits.
The curtain has been finally brought down on the reference of disorderly conduct of 32 parliamentarians to the Privileges Committee of the Lok Sabha. Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, through an order issued on Tuesday, has withdrawn from the Committee the references relating to 31 opposition National Democratic Alliance Members of Parliament, for their disorderly conduct in the House on April 24.
Despite the Ram Mandir issue failing to cut much ice with voters, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani on Friday reaffirmed his commitment to building the temple at Ayodhya.
Former Customs additional collector Somnath Thapa, convicted in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case, died after a prolonged illness at a hospital in Mumbai on Friday. Thapa (60) was suffering from lung cancer, the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Actcourt sources said. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by special TADA Court Judge Pramod Kode in July 2007.
The Parliamentary committee examining the cash-for-vote scam has no plans as of now to call Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh and Congress leader Ahmed Patel for questioning.
Ravi said that a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs had been fixed with the agenda of proroguing them, to have a fresh session in February with the Presidential address on the first day.
Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on Tuesday disqualified Telugu Desam Party MP M Jagannath, who defied a party whip and voted for the Congress-led United Progressive government in a trust vote He was diusqualified according to the Anti-Defection Law under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, a Lok Sabha release said.
The Speaker referred to the Home Ministry the matter related to Sanjeev Saxena, alleged aide of Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh, Sudheendra Kulkarni, a close aide of senior BJP leader L K Advani, and Suhail Hindustani, a day after the parliamentary inquiry committee said there was need for further investigation into the roles played by them.
The gory memories of the 2001 Parliament attack came alive at a function to mark the martyrdom of the security personnel who laid down their lives to save the symbol of Indian democracy.Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Leader of Opposition LK Advani, chairperson of United Progressive Alliance Sonia Gandhi and other senior leaders of various political parties offered floral tributes.
Dubbing the Mumbai terror strikes as 'most horrendous', Parliament on Wednesday sought strict action and all out efforts to prevent recurrence of such attacks. In the wake of the Mumbai terror strikes, Home Minister P Chidambaram will make a statement on terrorism in Lok Sabha on Thursday.
Action against Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee was decided well before the trust vote, but was not announced lest it should affect discussion over issues that prompted the party to withdraw support to the UPA Government, Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan said.
A commemorative stamp of late Joachim and Violet Alva was released by President Pratibha Patil in New Delhi today, coinciding with the birth centenary year of the couple.
Mamata imposed affirmative action to the point of absurdity. This has naturally led to counter-action: The Hindus who never thought of themselves as Hindus are now banding behind the BJP, points out Aditi Phadnis.
It will be starting from the scratch for several leaders, big and small, with the redrawing of Parliamentary constituencies as their pocket boroughs have disappeared following the delimitation exercise.
Feeling "tortured" by the Left parties' repeated "questioning" of his decisions, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on Friday threatened to step down "here and now" as a protest against "insult" to the Chair. Chatterjee said a "new culture" had emerged in the House wherein the members "go on questioning" the Speaker's ruling.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday said the office of Lok Sabha Speaker has been "truly elevated and dignified" by Somnath Chatterjee, who set himself as a "role model".
The Lok Sabha was adjourned till 12 noon on Monday amid uproarious scenes. Meanwhile, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned for the day as a mark of respect to Laxminarayan Sharma, a sitting member of the House who died last week.
"You do not deserve one paisa of public money," an angry Speaker Somnath Chatterjee said as members of several political parties stormed the Well of Lok Sabha raising a spate of issues and disrupted Question Hour.
Pranab Mukherjee's speech was so boring that half of the Treasury benches were found napping. Newsmen peeped from the Press Gallery to see the mood of the MPs.
The presentation of the Interim General Budget for 2009-10 was on Monday interrupted briefly as the Lok Sabha adjourned after JD(S) member M P Veerendrakumar complained of uneasiness.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday dedicated to the nation the 182-metre statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the tallest in the world, and said it will be a reminder about the courage of a man who thwarted efforts to disintegrate India.
For that matter, almost every main political party in the House had turncoats in the crucial trust vote that the government won comfortably. They include Congress, Janata Dal-United, Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Shiv Sena, Telugu Desam Party, Telangana Rashtra Samiti, National Loktantrik Party and NPF. The Lok Sabha Secretariat had already served the show cause notices on the concerned MPs, asking why they should not be expelled for defying the whip.
Joining issues with the British delegation in Malaysia, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on Friday asserted that no "deal" was made to support Malaysia's candidature to a senior post in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association election for which is to be held tomorrow.
The Enquiry Committee that went into the alleged cash-for-vote scam during the July 22 trust vote would be presenting its report to Lok Sabha on Thursday.
A clerical error compounded by callousness of the higher bureaucracy has raised a storm over the already vexed Ayodhya issue.
India is too diverse to be governed centrally and with a single system. The way forward is for the central government to keep the monopoly of military power and a share of national resources while the provinces must have greater autonomy, recommends Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'Why on earth should I apologise? What did I do? I have been like this all my life. I only listen to my inner voice and do what I feel is right. I am a braveheart and am never scared. I have always swum against the tide and have never stooped,' Marxist stormy petrel Subhas Chakraborty lets fly
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar adds that the matter will be resolved within two months.
Those disqualified by Speaker Somnath Chatterjee are Bhalchandra Yadav (Khalilabad), Ramakant Yadav (Azamgarh) and Mohammad Shahid Akhlaque and their seats in the House have been declared vacant. Petitions for their disqualification were filed by the BSP under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution (anti-defection law) on the ground that the three MPs had voluntarily given up the membership of their party and joined the Samajwadi Party.
Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, nearly cried in the Lok Sabha, when Left party leaders Basudev Acharya and Gurudas Das Gupta attacked him by quoting rules for not allowing them to speak after he had rejected the no confidence motion against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The motion was moved by the Left parties after Dr Singh refused to report to the House.
The petitioner had a Congress background and in the recorded conversation, deregatory references were said to have been made against apex court judges.
Announcing this, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee thanked the members for their cooperation in passing the Finance Bill 2008, but regretted that 28 hours and 30 minutes were lost due to interruptions and forced adjournments. However, he also noted that the House sat for an extra 36 hours and 38 minutes to compensate for the loss.
The meeting saw Opposition agreeing to undertake orderly behaviour in the House and in turn Chatterjee withdrawing the controversial reference of the MPs, mostly from the BJP- led National Democratic Alliance, to the Committee, sources said. An announcement on the issue is expected when the House reassembles at 14.00 hours. "Wait till two," the Speaker said, when reporters asked him about the outcome of the meeting.
Speaker Somnath Chatterjee has called for an all-party meeting to resolve the impasse over the privilege notice issue.
"Punishment is not the central theme. There is no pre-conceived idea whether the punishment should be meted out or not," Lok Sabha Privileges Committee Chairman V Kishore Chandra Deo told PTI. Deo said the very fact that Speaker Somnath Chatterjee has referred the issue to the committee rather than taking action on his own showed that he wanted to sort out the matter by going to the root.
Protest in the House that day was prompted by the National Democratic Alliance agitation against price rise, which found its echo in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha after the opposition members formed a human chain outside Parliament complex to denounce the government's failure to check the price spiral.
