Congress MPs' actions were dictatorship, not their suspension: Union Minister Meghwal

After the suspension of seven Congress MPs from Lok Sabha for the rest of the Budget Session on charges of gross misconduct, Union Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal on Thursday said that the MPs' actions were "hooliganism and dictatorship".

Reacting to Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury's statement of terming the suspension of his colleagues as "dictatorship", Meghwal told ANI, "When you take away papers from the Speaker's table, then that is dictatorship... This has happened for the first time. What they have done is dictatorship and hooliganism."

Condemning the suspension of seven party MPs, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury had said, "Is this a dictatorship? It seems the government does not want Delhi violence issue to be discussed in Parliament, that is why this suspension. I too staged a protest, why don't they suspend me? We strongly condemn this."

Seven Congress MPs - Gaurav Gogoi, TN Prathapan, Dean Kuriakose, R Unnithan, Manickam Tagore, Benny Behnan and Gurjeet Singh Aujla - were suspended from Lok Sabha for unruly behaviour and misconduct.

It was the fourth day of protests by the Opposition MPs over their demand for a discussion on last week's communal violence in Delhi in which at least 47 people died and more than 200 got severely injured. The victims have alleged police inaction during the four days of violence.