The Opposition INDIA bloc has submitted a no-confidence motion against Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, said Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday, accusing the Rajya Sabha chairman of conducting the proceedings of the Upper House of Parliament in an “extremely partisan manner”.
“It has been a very painful decision for the INDIA parties to take, but in the interests of parliamentary democracy they have had to take this step,” Ramesh said in a social media post.
He added that the motion had been submitted to the Rajya Sabha secretary general.
Article 67(b) of the Constitution states that the vice president may be removed from his office if a resolution is passed by the Council of States, or Rajya Sabha, and agreed to by the House of the People, which is the Lok Sabha. “But no resolution for the purpose of this clause shall be moved unless at least fourteen days’ notice has been given of the intention to move the resolution,” it states.
The Winter Session of Parliament will end on December 20.
“We were forced to submit this no-confidence motion for the first time in the 72-year history of the Rajya Sabha,” Ramesh told PTI.
He said that Dhankhar was “not listening to the leader of Opposition; he is allowing the treasury bench MPs to make the wildest of charges, in the most objectionable language against our most senior leaders and they are being encouraged to do so.”
Kiren Rijiju, the parliamentary affairs minister, criticised the Opposition for moving the notice against Dhankhar. The ruling alliance has a majority in Parliament and “we all have faith in the chairman”, Rijiju told reporters on Tuesday evening.
The Opposition’s move came after days of uproar in the Rajya Sabha, with members of the ruling National Democratic Alliance accusing top Congress leadership of colluding with billionaire philanthropist George Soros to “destabilise” India.
Congress leaders have questioned why Dhankhar had allowed a debate on the matter while rejecting several discussions raised by the Opposition.
On Tuesday too, the Rajya Sabha witnessed disruptions over the allegations raised by the National Democratic Alliance. Amid members shouting slogans, Dhankhar eventually adjourned the House for the day.
As soon as the Upper House had convened at noon after the first adjournment, Leader of the House JP Nadda repeated the allegations that the Congress was attempting to destabilise the country, reported The Indian Express.
“There is one international organisation, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which is bent on destabilising international relations,” alleged Nadda. “Whatever was reported by OCCRP, Lok Sabha’s Opposition leader has brought up in Parliament and proven that he has become the tool of external forces and is trying to destabilise the country.”
Nadda alleged that the Congress was in “collaboration with such organisations, which bring instability to the country,” The Indian Express reported.
“This is dangerous to the internal and external security of the country,” said Nadda, who is also the Bharatiya Janata Party’s national president. “The funding for this sort of activity is being done by George Soros. I want to know what is the relationship between the Congress party and George Soros?”
The BJP has for long alleged that Soros, a 94-year-old Hungarian-American, has “designs to weaken Indian democracy”.
On Thursday, citing an investigation by the French investigative journalism outlet Mediapart into the OCCRP, the Hindutva party alleged that Soros and the US Department of State were backing a campaign to “destabilise” Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
Mediapart’s publisher and director Carine Fouteau, however, on Sunday accused the BJP of distorting its reporting to promote a “conspiracy theory”.
The BJP had “wrongly exploited Mediapart’s article in order to spread fake news that we never published”, The Wire quoted Fouteau as saying.
During the Rajya Sabha proceedings on Tuesday, the Congress rejected the allegations made by Nadda and said they were “wrong and unsubstantiated”.
“What he is saying does not have any basis,” Congress MP Pramod Tiwari was quoted as saying by The Indian Express. “But what we have been raising has basis because a [United States] court has said the BJP has been bribed. Let the Opposition be allowed to discuss Adani in the House.”
Tiwari was referring to the recent indictment of industrialist Gautam Adani by a US court.
The indictment accuses Adani and his associates of conspiring to pay $265 million, or Rs 2,200 crore, in bribes to Indian officials between 2021 and 2023 to secure solar power contracts expected to yield $2 billion in profits. Officials from Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir were allegedly bribed.
The Opposition leaders have been protesting in Parliament against not being allowed a discussion on the matter.
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