Both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were adjourned on Friday following Opposition ruckus over the ethnic violence in Manipur and a video of two women being paraded naked in the northeastern state. While the Lok Sabha was adjourned for the day, chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar adjourned proceedings in the Upper House till 2.30 pm on Friday.
The Lok Sabha will meet again on Monday at 11 am.
As soon as the proceedings began in Lok Sabha, Opposition MPs started to shout slogans, demanding discussion on the Manipur situation. Congress, DMK and Left MPs raised slogans and told Speaker Om Birla that Manipur was bleeding. The Speaker told Opposition members that sloganeering will not bring any solution to the problem but only dialogues and discussions can. "This is not good. The solution can be found only through discussions," he said.
Amid the ruckus, Birla asked Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to speak. Singh said the government was ready for a discussion on Manipur incidents. "We are ready for a discussion... But I can see that the Opposition is unnecessarily creating problems. The Opposition is not serious about a discussion on Manipur. We want a discussion and there should be a discussion," he told the House.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh speaks in the Lok Sabha during the Monsoon session of Parliament | Sansad
However, with the Opposition not relenting, the speaker adjourned the proceedings till 12 noon. Though it met again after the break, continuous Opposition uproar over the Manipur situation prompted the Speaker to adjourn the House for the day.
Meanwhile, Rajya Sabha too was adjourned till 2:30 pm after an uproar over the violence in Manipur and the Chair expunging words from House proceedings.
Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar adjourned proceedings till 2.30 pm as TMC's Derek O'Brien sought to raise a point of order over the expunging of certain words from the House proceedings on Thursday.
While the House proceedings were washed out in protests, Dhankhar had expunged references made by O'Brien seeking Prime Minister Narendra Modi's response to the situation in the state.
On Friday, he sought to raise a point of order over the expunging of words. "Three words were expunged. Yesterday, (I had said) the prime minister should open his mouth on Manipur," he said, seeking to know if any of the words were not fit for Parliamentary proceedings.
The Chairman repeatedly asked what his point of order was and as O'Brien tried to explain, the House plunged into disorder. Dhankhar at this point adjourned the proceedings till 2.30 pm.
The opening day of the Monsoon session of Parliament too had witnessed heated exchanges over the Manipur issue.
(With inputs from PTI)
