Opposition protests wash out 1st week of Parliament session

New Delhi: The Opposition protests yet again stalled the proceedings of both the Houses of Parliament on Friday, completing the wash out of the entire first week of the monsoon session, even as the prospect of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha starting productive work next week with Operation Sindoor-Pahalgam debates offer some relief.

Both the Houses witnessed three forced adjournments - after 11am, 12 noon and later at 2pm for the day - as the Opposition MPs kept up their vociferous protest against the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter list in Bihar and some other issues. While they paused the protest for a while in the LS for Speaker Om Birla to make the Kargil Vijay Diwas anniversary remarks, they did the same in the Rajya Sabha for Deputy Chairman Harivansh to administer the oath to actor and MKM president Kamal Haasan, who was elected to the House recently. The chair also rejected Opposition MPs' notices for adjournment motions on the issue of SIR, alleging it discriminated against the migrant workers of Bihar, and on the India-UK Free Trade Agreement.

Later, the respective presiding officers' attempts to proceed with the question hour didn't bear fruit given the sloganeering and disorder in the Houses, prompting the former to adjourn the proceedings for the day. Speaker Birla then asked the floor managers of ruling and Opposition sides to join him at a meeting to pave the path for House discussions next week.


Outside the Parliament, the MPs of the INDIA bloc, including Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge, the respective leaders of Opposition in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, took out a march towards the Gandhi statue, demanding scrapping of the SIR drive. They also tore off the placards written with "quit SIR" and threw them into the dustbins as their symbolic rejection of the ECI drive.