New Delhi, July 27: Opposition alliance INDIA on Thursday boycotted a meeting of the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) of Rajya Sabha in protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi not making a statement on Manipur violence in Parliament, a senior leader said.
The Rajya Sabha BAC has 11 members including the Vice President as its ex-officio chairman. Three MPs from the 26-member opposition front INDIA are on the BAC committee — Jairam Ramesh (Congress), Misa Bharti (RJD), and Derek O’Brien (TMC). BRS’s Keshav Rao also gave the meeting a miss.
This was the latest in a slew of meetings that members of the Opposition bloc either walked out of or boycotted over the last few weeks.
On Wednesday, Opposition members walked out of a meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology headed by Shiv Sena (Shinde) MP Prataprao Jhadav opposing the adoption of a report on the new Personal Data Protection Bill.
They argued that the bill was never formally referred to the committee and a report can’t be framed on the basis of informal discussions.
The draft report was circulated on the eve of the meeting and the members argued that none of them were told that such a report was in the works. Amid high drama, seven opposition MPs and eight MPs from BJP and allied parties engaged in a bitter exchange for nearly an hour.
BJP MP Nishikant Dubey proposed a vote to break the deadlock, the point at which the opposition members – CPI-Marxist’s John Brittas, Congress’ Karti P Chidambaram, TMC MPs Jawahar Sircar and Mohua Moitra, among others, — walked out. Brittas moved a dissent note too. The report was adopted in their absence.
On July 20 also, opposition leaders walked out of a BAC meeting in protest against Modi not making a statement on the Manipur issue in Parliament and the Centre bringing a bill to replace an ordinance on the control of services in Delhi despite it being sub-judice.
Leaders of the Congress and other opposition parties including the Left, TMC, DMK, RJD, NCP, and AAP walked out of the meeting as their protest in writing was not accepted by the chairman.
On Wednesday, the Congress moved a no-confidence motion against the government in Lok Sabha on behalf of the INDIA bloc to force Modi to speak on the ethnic violence in Manipur in which more than 160 people have been killed since May when it began. (PTI)
