Uttarakhand issue rocks Rajya Sabha on second day too

The Rajya Sabha on Tuesday again witnessed disruptions over the Uttarakhand issue, and the chair finally adjourned the upper house for the day.

Soon after the newly nominated members were administered oath, the Congress and other opposition parties started raising slogans against the Narendra Modi government and demanded a debate on the Uttarakhand issue.

As the house met at 2 p.m., the Congress demanded the Centre's apology for, what it termed as, destabilising the duly-elected Harish Rawat government in Uttarakhand.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the Congress and other opposition parties were actually not interested in what the government had to say on the issue.

"You want to discuss the Uttarakhand issue, but you don't want to listen," he said amid noisy scenes.

Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad raised a point against Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, saying Jaitley was trying to set a wrong precedent by accusing Uttarakhand assembly Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal of "turning a minority government into a majority government".

"It's a wrong precedent that the central government is trying to set," Azad said, adding it was not in the interest of the country's democracy to interfere in the internal matters of the state assemblies.

Jaitley defended the Modi government's decision by saying that once President's Rule is imposed in a state, the said proclamation is to be laid in both houses of parliament.

"But the Congress is not interested (in letting the proclamation to be placed before parliament)," he alleged, and said that once it was done, the government would explain why it was done.

In response, the entire opposition opposed him vociferously.

Congress leaders and others assembled in the well of the house, shouting slogans like "Modi teri tanashahi nahi chalegi (Prime Minister Narendra Modi, your dictatorship will not be tolerated)".

Earlier in the day also, similar scenes were witnessed in the Rajya Sabha.

The upper house witnessed four adjournments till 3 p.m. When the house reassembled at 3 p.m., the chair adjourned it for the day as its plea to let the house discuss and pass important bills went unheeded.

The Rajya Sabha was disrupted thrice on the Uttarakhand issue on Monday as well, before it was adjourned for the day without conducting any business.

The BJP-led government is in minority in the upper house.

--IANS

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