Parliament logjam intensifies as obstinate Opposition decides to ruin the session
Nrw Delhi: The parliament logjam took an ugly turn on Monday when Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan suspended 25 Congress MPs for five days for "willfully obstructing the business of the house". The Congress MPs, including Gaurav Gogoi, Sushmita Dev, Ranjeet Ranjan, K.C. Venugopal and Deepinder Singh Hooda, were "named" under rule 374(A). Earlier, the Lok Sabha secretariat had said 27 members have been suspended. They later corrected the number to 25. The speaker's action came soon after the failure of an all party meeting called by the government to break the parliament logjam. The all party meeting today failed to break the nearly fortnight-long deadlock in Parliament with Congress unrelenting on its demand for resignation of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and BJP CMs Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and Government firmly rejecting it. However, a number of regional parties including Trinamool Congress and Biju Janta Dal voiced anguish over continued disruption of the Houses and asked the two national parties to resolve the matter to ensure that other issues are discussed in Parliament. JD(U) and Left parties, however, backed Congress in the meeting.
