Cong leaders object to expunging portions of Kharge’s speech, latter dashes off letter to Dhankhad

New Delhi: A day after verbal exchange between Mallikarjun Kharge , Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha and Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar, Congress party has taken objection to expunging of some portions of former’s speech in the House.

Calling it an ‘arbitrary’ move to delete portions of Kharge’s speech, Congress leaders asserted that there was no use of unparliamentary language.

As the proceedings began today, Congress leaders protested against expunging of Kharge’s remarks and cited past instances when former PMs Atla Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh used similar words in the House. However, chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar didn’t look convinced.

Mallikarjun Kharge also protested against the move and shot off a letter to the Rajya Sabha chairman.

In the letter, senior Congress leader questioned the intentions behind repeated ‘needling’ in his speech and quoted a couple of legislations from the rule book to suggest why the interjections in his speech amounted to violation of rules & conventions of house.

Kharge, while replying to Motion of Thanks on February 8, was tearing into the Centre for latter’s alleged patronage of business conglomerate Adani Group. Launching a tirade against the Centre, Kharge made several references to Prime Minister and insinuated that it was a ‘Modi-Adani’ deal. He said that unless Adani got favours from Modi government, his fortunes wouldn’t have swelled so much, in so less  time.

In a three-page letter, Kharge reasoned that it is Opposition’s duty to raise matters pertaining to people’s interest and it is upto government to investigate the matter.

Kharge says that directions were made from the chair to autheniticate 6 observations made by him, during the course of his speech.

“Such a scenario, where authentication is sought for points made in the floor of House, amounts to subversion of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech”, he said.