NEW DELHI: India’s parliament was adjourned twice on Monday after lawmakers held protests and threw paper at the speaker following the expulsion from the house
of top opposition figure Rahul Gandhi.
Gandhi lost his parliamentary seat on Friday after being convicted in a case that critics say shows how the rule of law is under threat in the world’s largest democracy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The speaker called off proceedings less than a minute after opposition MPs wearing black erupted in shouting, some of them throwing bits of paper at him.
“I want to run the House with dignity,” Speaker Om Birla said.
Opposition MPs have been demanding a probe into potential links between the prime minister and the business empire of tycoon Gautam Adani, which has been hit by allegations of accounting fraud.
Debates have also descended into shouting matches over comments made by Rahul in Britain in early March that Indian democracy is “under attack”.
Opposition lawmakers from different parties also staged protests in New Delhi on Monday, the latest in a series of recent demonstrations.
Piyush Goyal, trade minister and a member of Modi’s ruling BJP, on Monday accused the opposition of “cheap politics” and “trying to mislead people”.
Rahul Gandhi “has no right to consider himself above the law of the country”, Goyal told reporters.
The lower house of parliament ruled Rahul ineligible to sit as an MP, a day after he was sentenced to two years for defamation.
A BJP spokesman said Thursday the court acted with “due judicial process” in arriving at its ruling in the case, one of several Gandhi is facing. — AFP
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