New Delhi: A question listed for parliament by a Congress MP on whether NRIs were being asked by authorities to stop financially assisting the farmers’ protest has been dropped from the final list of questions for December 2, Indian Express has reported.
In late October, The Wire had reported how US-based billionaire Darshan Singh Dhaliwal had been deported from the Delhi airport and said that he had been specifically targeted by immigration officials ever since he began funding a langar at the farmers’ protest site in Singhu, on January 6, 2021.
“When I went to the immigration counter, the officials told me to wait…After two hours, they told me that I will have to go back to the US. When I asked why I was being denied permission to enter India, the immigration officials asked the same questions that they had been asking earlier too – why I organised the langar at Singhu border and who is paying for it. They said if I wanted to enter India, I should stop funding this langar,” Dhaliwal had told The Wire.
The PIO businessman said that ever since he started organising the supply of food for the protesting farmers at Singhu border, he had come to India three times – in January, in April and now in October. “Whenever I came to India, the immigration officials would ask me why I was supporting the farmers’ protest and who was funding the langar,” he had added.
Darshan Singh Dhaliwal serving farmers at Singhu border during one of his recent visits to India. Photo: By arrangement
Rajya Sabha MP K.C. Venugopal had sought to know from the Minister of External Affairs if a number of NRIs based outside India were harassed at the airports and even sent back from airports in the country, the details of such action in the last three years, whether some of them had been asked to stop helping farmers agitating against the three (now repealed) farm laws and the details of these actions, if they had been taken.
The question had been provisionally admitted and was scheduled to be answered on December 2.
Indian Express spoke to unnamed sources who said emails were sent on November 23 to concerned offices of the MEA to seek inputs on provisionally admitted questions, including Venugopal’s, by November 29. “Venugopal’s questions, however, did not find mention in the tentative list of Finally Admitted Questions cleared by the ministry on November 26,” Express‘s report notes.
This tentative list contained questions on easing of travel restrictions, Passport Seva Kendras, salaries of people living and working abroad, membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, human rights violations against Tamil people in Sri Lanka, and so on.
The final admitted questions list for the Rajya Sabha, which was cleared on Monday for the December 2 session, has all questions approved in the tentative list except Venugopal’s question, which was missing in the tentative list too.
“Earlier they used to give a clear reason for dropping a question but this time they have only conveyed it orally,” Venugopal told the newspaper, referring to this method of functioning as ‘clear cut dictatorial’.
The report notes that admissibility of questions is the sole decision of the Rajya Sabha chairman, who is Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu.
The Union government, during the earlier Monsoon Session, had moved to disallow a question in the Rajya Sabha seeking details of whether the government entered into a contract with the Israeli company NSO Group, which sells the Pegasus spyware. The government said that the “the ongoing issue of Pegasus” is subjudice after “several PILs have been filed in the Supreme Court”.
Reports by the Pegasus Project, an international consortium of media organisations, including The Wire, have revealed that politicians, journalists, activists, Supreme Court officials were among those who may have been targets of surveillance by an Indian client of the NSO Group. The military-grade spyware is only sold to “vetted governments”. The Indian government has neither denied nor confirmed purchasing the hacking software.