In letters to Speaker, Cong MPs demand restoration of Rahul’s ‘expunged’ speech, call out Sansad TV for ‘partisan’ behaviour

The Lok Sabha Congress MPs on Thursday wrote to Speaker Om Birla expressing their concerns over the treatment of party leader Rahul Gandhi’s speech on Wednesday.

Condemning the move to expunge certain words from Gandhi’s speech, the legislators, in a letter, requested the Speaker to restore them after accepting a clarification from the speaker. While in another, they criticised the telecast of the party leader’s Rahul Gandhi’s speech, during which the Sansad TV focussed more on Birla and the treasury benches.

Questioning the reason behind expunging the words from Gandhi’s maiden speech in the Parliament after being reinstated as the MP, the Congress argued: “This is not tantamount to a personal accusation of a defamatory nature, unlike the language used by Shri Nishikant Dubey the previous day, which was expunged and then restored to the record.”

“The Directions of the Speaker provide, in clause 115(3), that the Speaker may seek and accept clarifications from the Members concerned about his remarks. Given such clarification, the expunction may be reversed, ” they added.

In the other letter, the MPs called out Sansad TV for behaving “in a shamefully partisan manner” during the No-Confidence motion debate.

They pointed out: “…while the Opposition was exercising its lack of confidence in the Council of Members, Sansad TV was scrolling the achievements of each Ministry at the bottom of the screen. We are grateful that you stopped when it was pointed out, but it should never have occurred.”