Irani row: Congress calls on LS speaker to maintain Parliamentary traditions

The Congress Party, which has given the privilege motion against Union Human Resource and Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani, on Tuesday, urged Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan to reprimand the minister, thus maintaining the tradition of the Parliament where no one is allowed to lie.

"Unfortunately, Sumitra ji is a bit of a partisan speaker and does not give ruling in a correct way. But this is a tradition where the Parliament must come together and reprimand the minister. It is not the matter of a BJP Minister or any other minister. It is a tradition you are setting. Once you let Smriti Irani ji go misleading the house, then any other minister will start doing that. It will be a sad day for democracy if it happens," Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit told ANI.

"It is very clear that Smriti Irani misled the house. There are three factual errors that she made. It is a very serious matter. In the Parliament, ministers cannot quote wrong facts. In this case it was not a mistake because she knew exactly what was happening, she had all the facts with her and deliberately she told lies in the Parliament," he added.

Congress leaders KC Venugopal and Ranjeet Ranjan today gave the privilege motion against Smriti Irani in the Lok Sabha as party vice president Rahul Gandhi is expected to address the House today.

The Congress gave notice for a privilege motion against Irani yesterday and created a ruckus in the Lok Sabha for a short while before Finance Minister Arun Jaitley stood to present the General Budget 2016-17.

The grand old party claimed earlier that Irani's arrogance and blatant lies in Parliament during the discussion on Hyderabad University scholar Rohith Vemula forced them to move the privilege motion against her.

Irani in her speech in Parliament had said there was no question of an apology from her. She pointed out that according to a report submitted to the Telangana High Court, the police had reached Rohith's hostel at 7:20 pm when they found the body.

"The police said that when they reached the hostel, they found the room open and the dead body was on the table. A hand written suicide note was found. The suicide note that was left behind does not blame anyone," she said.

"This is not my submission. This is what the police said. No one allowed a doctor near this child, to revive this child. Instead, his body was used as a political tool. No police was allowed till 6:30 am the following morning. Who tried to help this child?" she asked.