New Delhi: A day after Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra criticised the Lok Sabha chair for frequently interrupting and then cutting her speech short, Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla urged Lok Sabha members to refrain from making a statement against the chair “inside and outside the House”.
Although he did not name Moitra, Birla’s statement came in the wake of the TMC MP going public with her protest against the chair, BJP MP Rama Devi.
“This is the dignity of parliamentary democracy and I hope that you all will agree with this. I have taken serious cognisance of incidents that had happened in the past few days. I want to request all members that commenting on the chair, especially outside the house using social media and media is not right, Birla said.
“Honourable members, I want to bring a subject to your notice that, be it inside the house or outside the house, comments made on the chair is not good for the dignity of the house,” he said, adding that “the dignity of the house is of a very high standard.”
He emphasised that the speaker’s chair has “constitutional rights”, and that he/she “always tries to be impartial” while running the House by the rules. He said that in cases where a difference of opinion arises, the members could always “visit his chamber to talk about it.”
Later, India Today reported that Birla may initiate action against Moitra,. However, it also added that she may also be let off with a “warning”.
Immediately after her speech was cut short, Mahua protested against the chair by completing her speech outside the House in presence of the media. Later, she tweeted multiple posts to allege that the chair stopped her speech before her allotted time of 13 minutes, and frequently asked her to “speak calmly” as she gave her fiery speech slamming the Narendra Modi government on issues like the farm laws, Pegasus controversy, and a general decay in India’s democratic standards over the last few years.
“Is it any of her right, is it any of her business to tell me how I should do my speech? She tells me not to get angry. Whether I should be angry or mellow, it is up to me. It is my tenor, my tone,” she said.
Speaking to The Wire after Birla made his remarks on Friday, Moitra said, “While I mean no disrespect to his chair, I wish he would reserve his anguish for slightly more important things. If he were truly impartial, he would reserve his anguish for what mattered and let the opposition leaders have a discussion on Pegasus, let the opposition leaders have a say on farmers bill.”
“And when he had given 13 minutes of time to an opposition leader, then he should make sure whoever is in his chair does not interrupt the person by telling her what the tone of her speech should be like by telling her whether it should be ghussa or pyar. I would really advise him to look within his conscience and see whether he is doing justice to the position of the chair,” she added.
She recalled that Birla had skipped the Lok Sabha’s proceedings for two consecutive days when he was “similarly pained” over disruptions in the House following his refusal to allow discussions on the Delhi riots and the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
“Then, all parliamentary party leaders had to go to his chamber and pledge allegiance to him, and tell him that he was the koh-i-noor of the house. All leaders had to request him to come back. So, what he said today is nothing new. At least in my short parliamentary career, this is the second or third time I have heard him say this,” she told The Wire.
“The house also belongs to the opposition. The speaker should be equally pained when democracy is stifled inside the House,” she said, referring to Birla’s inaction when BJP leaders heckled Rahul Gandhi during his recent speech in the Lok Sabha. “When BJP leaders were heckling Rahul Gandhi during his speech, and keep heckling opposition leaders on different occasions, he (Birla) keeps saying that ‘yeh sab toh chalta hi rahata hai, choti baatein hai (These things happen; these are small things)’,” she said.