In an attempt to end the deadlock between the government and Opposition during the ongoing winter session, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla called a meeting of Floor leaders of all parties on Tuesday.
Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, TR Baalu, Kalyan Banerjee, PV Midhun Reddy, Rajiv Ranjan Singh, Supriya Sule Anupriya Patel, ET Mohammed Basheer, Anubhav Mohanty, Gaurav Gogai, NK Premchandran, were among the leaders who attended the meeting.
Earlier today, Opposition MPs staged walkouts from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha after Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu rejected revocation of the suspension of 12 Opposition MPs.
Following this, the Opposition leaders held a protest at the Mahatma Gandhi statue in Parliament.
Soon after the House assembled for the day, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge read a submission requesting the Rajya Sabha Chairman to revoke the suspension of 12 MPs from the House for the entire winter session.
In his submission, Kharge said, "I request you to revoke the suspension of 12 members of the House."
Kharge also pointed out that he was not allowed to raise a point of order and it is a gross violation of the rule. He also said that the members should be named before issuing suspension orders against them.
However, the Chairman denied revoking the suspension, saying the House named all members on August 10 and requested them to help in the functioning of the House but they ransacked the House.
The Chairman said even the Deputy Chairman also took the names of the members.
"This is not the way. You ransacked the House and now you are teaching me a lesson. I cannot revoke the suspension of the members. The bitter experience of the last monsoon session still continues to haunt most of us. I was expecting and waiting for the leading lights of the House to take lead in expressing outrage over what happened in the last session," said Naidu during the discussion in the Upper House.
"Such assurance would have helped me in handling the matter appropriately but unfortunately it will not be," he added.
Rajya Sabha on the first day of its business for the winter session on Monday suspended 12 of its members for the rest of the current session, ending on December 23, on account of 'unruly and violent behaviour' during the monsoon session of Parliament.
The suspended MPs include six from Congress, two each from TMC and Shiv Sena and one each from CPM and CPI.
The suspended MPs are Elamaram Kareem (CPM), Phulo Devi Netam, Chhaya Verma, R Bora, Rajamani Patel, Syed Nasir Hussain and Akhilesh Prasad Singh of the Congress, Binoy Viswam of CPI, Dola Sen and Shanta Chhetri of Trinamool Congress, Priyanka Chaturvedi and Anil Desai of Shiv Sena.
( With inputs from ANI )
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