In ’89, Somnath Chatterjee was the ‘unruly’ one

Present privileges committee chairman was also expelled

NEW DELHI: The man cracking the whip on parliamentarians for unruly behaviour today has himself been at the receiving end. Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee was expelled from the House for a week for disorderly conduct nearly two decades ago.

Recalling the incident, constitutional expert and then secretary general in the Lok Sabha Subhash C Kashyap said Chatterjee was among 63 MPs found guilty of disorderly conduct and expelled from the House on March 15, 1989.

MPs of communist parties figured prominently in the list which also included former prime minister VP Singh, present urban development minister S Jaipal Reddy and, remarkably, the current chairman of the privileges committee Kishore Chandra Deo.

On Thursday, for the first time in the history of Parliament, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee referred 32 ‘unruly’ MPs to the Privileges Committee. And it’s Chandra Deo’s committee that will decide on the issue.

All the 32 MPs the Speaker has pulled up are from the opposition. 

These include 22 from BJP, four from Akali Dal, two from Biju Janata Dal, one from JD (U), two from Shiv Sena and one from Mayawati’s BSP, the only non-NDA MP in the lot.
 
The BJP sought to put the onus of smooth conduct of Parliament on the government. “For smooth conduct of the House, the government has to be responsive. Opposition will be responsible when the government is responsive,” said BJP spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member Prakash Javdekar. Allies and supporters of the government itself disrupt Parliament proceedings, he said in apparent reference to frequent disruptions by the Left parties.

Javdekar, however, refrained from commenting on Speaker’s decision. “We will raise it at the appropriate forum at the appropriate time,” he said.

The immediate provocation for the action was April 24 incident when opposition members stormed the well of the House shouting slogans against the government on the issue of price rise without paying heed to the Chair.

Commenting on the Speaker’s action, Subhash Kashyap said that in principle, a matter of privilege should not become a party issue. If there is a breach of privilege, it is a matter of the honour or privilege of the whole House.

He recalled the time when Indira Gandhi was expelled and sent to prison. “It was a party affair and the motion was subsequently rescinded and expulsion revoked with retrospective effect. “It was a case of misuse of the privilege power of the House by majority,” he said.

He stressed that a distinction has to be made between disorderly conduct and breach of privilege, since there are provisions for dealing with disorderly conduct. “It need not be referred to a committee for investigation,” said Kashyap.

There will be no immediate bar on the 32 members attending the House proceedings but the privileges committee will summon them to examine if their conduct amounted to breach of privileges of the other members.