The Indian parliament suspended 79 lawmakers from opposition parties on Monday for disrupting a session, followed by another 48 on Tuesday.
Another 14 were suspended last week, bringing the total to 141 since December 14 – a remarkably high number of suspensions for even the rowdy Indian legislature.
The disruptive behavior stemmed from an even more disruptive act last week: an alarming security breach in which two intruders leaped into the area reserved for lawmakers, shouting slogans and setting off a smoke bomb.
The December 13 smoke bomb incident was especially surprising because the Indian parliament only took up residence in its new, and supposedly highly secure, headquarters in May.
Security is a serious matter for Indian legislators because they have long memories of a devastating terrorist attack in 2001 that killed seven people and wounded 18 others. December 13 is the anniversary of that terrible attack.
The question of who should be held responsible for the shocking breach of parliamentary security has been a topic of heated discussion between opposition lawmakers and the governing BJP party over the past week. Among other things, the opposition wants Home Minister Amit Shah to address the legislature about the security breach, but he has refused to do so.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a newspaper interviewer that he supported a full investigation, but saw “no need to debate this” in the legislature.
An Indian paramilitary soldier stands guard inside the premises of the Indian parliament in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023. Police arrested two people who jumped from the visitors’ gallery into the lower house of parliament, the speaker said, in a major security breach on the anniversary of a deadly 2001 terrorist attack on the complex.(AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
Modi’s critics denounced him as a tyrant for telling the opposition to sit quietly and await the results of an investigation. They also wanted to know how the intruders managed to obtain a visitor’s pass from a BJP legislator.
The increasingly forceful demands from opposition legislators were ruled disruptive behavior by parliamentary officials, and by Tuesday much of the opposition in both houses of parliament had been suspended for the rest of the winter session. Some of them could be suspended for much longer.
“First, intruders attacked Parliament, then the Modi government is attacking parliament and democracy,” opposition leader Malllikarjun Kharge of the Congress Party fumed on Twitter.
“With an opposition-less parliament, the Modi government can now bulldoze important pending legislations, crush any dissent, without debate,” Kharge charged.
“The PM can give an interview to a newspaper, the home minister can give interviews to TV channels, but they have zero accountability left in parliament, which represents the people of India,” Kharge said.
Another opposition MP, Manoj Kumar Jha, said his suspension was a “badge of honor.”
“It’s a recognition that they are trying to suppress the questions we are raising,” Jha said.
“A complete purge is being executed so that draconian bills are passed without any meaningful debate, and so that the BJP MP who facilitated the entry of the two intruders into the Lok Sabha on December 13th goes scot-free,” MP Jairam Ramesh of the Congress party said, packing just about all of the opposition’s complaints into a single post on Twitter.
The Lok Sabha is the lower house of Parliament. Speaker Om Birla said security is his responsibility, he is investigating the December 13 incident fully, and behavior that disrupts the business of the legislature would not be tolerated.
Federal minister Piyush Goyal, who moved for the suspension of disruptive legislators in the upper house, accused the opposition of orchestrating the disruptions in a “pre-planned strategy” to shut down parliament. He noted that some of their behavior, including waving protest signs inside the legislative chamber, violated the rules of conduct.
If the opposition was attempting to shut down the legislator, its gambit would fail on a technicality, as the rules require only a ten percent attendance quorum to function. BJP holds over half the seats in the Lok Sabha, so it can easily meet that threshold even if the entire opposition is suspended. Of course, proceeding with every single member of the opposing political team in the penalty box might be awkward.
As for the people whose actions led to all of these disruptions, the police have so far arrested six people in connection with the December 13 security breach. Family members of the demonstrators have said they were upset about the economy, a criticism the opposition eagerly repeated against Modi and BJP.
“She is highly qualified, but wasn’t getting a job. She was so stressed because of this that she often used to say that I should just die as despite studying so much, I am unable to earn two meals,” said the family of Neelam Azad, who was arrested for releasing colored smoke outside Parliament while some of her colleagues were perpetrating mischief inside.
