Upset Opposition To Send Rajya Sabha's Venkaiah Naidu A Sharp Message

Opposition parties led by the Congress are planning to write a rare protest letter to Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu, to complain against what they allege, is his partisan role in conducting the proceedings of the Rajya Sabha.

This is the first time that such a letter is being sent to the Rajya Sabha chairman.

Mr Naidu's counterpart in the Lok Sabha, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has already received one such rejoinder this session. In this, eight opposition leaders had questioned how she had dealt with their attempt to move a no-trust motion against the government in the last session.

Sources told NDTV that apart from the Congress, leaders from Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress, Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party and Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party had agreed to the move.

"Some more parties are expected to join in," a senior opposition leader said.

A Congress leader said the parties had been discussing how to clearly convey their anguish to the presiding officer for some time, had debated harsher steps, but for now, had settled for a letter to send its message.

Sources said the letter is broadly expected to underline three points.

One, is the growing perception among opposition parties that television channel run by the Rajya Sabha secretariat was being used to run down the opposition and propagate the ruling party's view.

Opposition leaders say they were also peeved at the suspicious manner in which two questions asked in parliament and the government's response recently disappeared from the Rajya Sabha website. They returned only after media reports about the omission.

These two related to the amount of demonetised currency notes received by cooperative banks including one in which, the Congress says, the BJP president Amit Shah was on the board.

Inside the house, the opposition has repeatedly questioned the conduct of the house when BJP president Amit Shah was speaking this week.

When opposition members objected to a disparaging comment Mr Shah made to former prime ministers in his speech on the row over Assam citizens' list on Tuesday, Mr Naidu had adjourned the house.

What opposition members found curious was that the house was adjourned at 1 pm for just 10 minutes rather than break for lunch as has been the tradition.

"Sir, why are you calling a break like this? It is ten past one," Derek O'Brien of the Trinamool Congress asked about the unusually short break when the house resumed. 

"First you answer, why is this disturbance?" Mr Naidu shot back. The house had to be adjourned for the day a few minutes later.

On Wednesday, opposition leaders again found it odd that the chairman invited Mr Shah to complete his speech that he had not been able to conclude due to disruptions rather than straightaway ask Home Minister Rajnath Singh to respond.