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The Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed four crucial Bills with voice vote while the Opposition was absent and two more members of the House — Thomas Chazhikadan of the Kerala Congress (Mani) and A M Ariff of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) — were suspended.
The total number of suspended members of Parliament (MPs) from the Lok Sabha now stands at 97. Since December 14, 143 Opposition MPs have been suspended from both the Houses after demanding a statement from Union Home Minister Amit Shah on the security breach in the Lok Sabha on December 13.
On Wednesday, the Rajya Sabha passed a Bill to raise the cap on the age limit for president and members of GST Appellate Tribunals. The Lok Sabha had passed the Bill on Tuesday.
In the Lok Sabha, during the discussion on the new criminal law Bills — the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Bill, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita Bill and the Bharatiya Sakshya Bill— that will replace colonial-era criminal laws, Union Home Minister Amit Shah listed provisions that would help speed up the delivery of justice.
He said that under the provisions of the new Bills, an FIR will have to be filed within three days of receiving the complaint and the preliminary enquiry will have to be finished within 14 days.
The lower House also passed the Telecom Bill that will allow the Centre to allocate satellite spectrum. The Bill has provisions to make the procurement of SIM cards or other telecommunication identifiers through “fraud, cheating or personation” punishable offences with a jail term of up to three years and a fine of up to Rs 50 lakh.
The Bill, once passed by the Rajya Sabha and notified, will allow the government to take over, manage or suspend any or all telecommunication services or networks in the interest of national security.
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In the Rajya Sabha, Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar said the act of mimicking him and its videography was an “insult” to the post of the Vice President, the farmers and his own community.
Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha MP Kalyan Banerjee had allegedly mimicked Dhankhar on Tuesday on the stairs of Parliament when Opposition MPs were protesting their suspensions.
During the question hour session in the Rajya Sabha, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs remained standing for about ten minutes to express solidarity with Dhankhar.
The BJP criticised the Opposition over Congress leader Rahul Gandhi recording the mimicking act of Banerjee. President Droupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla also expressed their solidarity with Dhankhar.
In a telephonic call, Modi told Dhankhar that he had been at the receiving end of such insults for twenty years. The Congress said the “entire Modi ecosystem” was now being galvanised on the “so-called mimicry non-issue” while remaining silent on how a BJP MP “facilitated entry of two intruders” into the Lok Sabha and on the suspension of 143 MPs.
President Murmu also expressed dismay "to see the manner in which the vice president was humiliated in the Parliament complex".
"Elected representatives must be free to express themselves, but their expression should be within the norms of dignity and courtesy. That has been the Parliamentary tradition we are proud of, and the people of India expect them to uphold it," Murmu posted on X.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh took to X and said, “Remember who mimicked whom and that too in the Lok Sabha?” With the post, he shared a video clip of Modi’s speech in Lok Sabha after Rahul Gandhi had hugged him in 2018.
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal flagged the absence of a majority of Opposition members in the lower house, saying the three key criminal Bills should not be passed in such a manner.
She also referred to the youth of Punjab getting emotional and taking steps during the militancy period in the state, and said that the two men who jumped inside the Lok Sabha chamber on December 13 raised the issue of unemployment, Manipur violence and farmers.
BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri referred to the Parliament security breach and said that people were being misled on the incident. He said references were being made to Bhagat Singh but when the freedom fighter entered Parliament (the then Central Legislative Assembly), India was under British rule. Hyderabad MP and AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi said that the new criminal law Bills were a threat to the civil liberty and rights of the people as they give sweeping powers to the police to take action against anyone.
