Monsoon Session Day 7: MPs Suspended; 'No Manual Scavenging Deaths' – 10 Updates

On Monday, four Lok Sabha MPs were suspended for the entire Monsoon Session for displaying placards in Lok Sabha.

Opposition members protest in the Rajya Sabha during ongoing Monsoon Session of Parliament, in New Delhi, Tuesday, 26 July.

(Photo: PTI)

While the seventh day of the Monsoon session, on Tuesday, 26 July, witnessed Members of Parliament (MPs) being suspended in the Rajya Sabha, TMC MP Derek O'Brien said, "Modi and Shah have suspended democracy... what are you talking about MPs?"

Besides this, more questions were asked in both houses, and even more unfounded answers were given, amid the Opposition's persistent demands for discussions on Goods and Services Tax, inflation, and price rise.

In between the chaos and the claims, here are the top 10 developments that transpired in the Parliament:

1. Nineteen Rajya Sabha Members of Parliament (MPs), including seven from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and six from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), were suspended on Tuesday, 26 July for the rest of the week for sloganeering against the Narendra Modi-led government.

2. Apart from the TMC and DMK MPs, three MPs were suspended from the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), two from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and one from the Communist Party of India (CPI). This also comes a day after four Congress MPs were suspended from the lower house.

3. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs V Muraleedharan had moved a motion to suspend 10 MPs, but when it was adopted by a voice vote, Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson Harivansh read out the names of 19 members.

4. Meanwhile, Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale said in the Lok Sabha that "no death has been reported due to manual scavenging but 188 people have died while cleaning sewer and septic tanks since 2019." However, a 2021 study by FactChecker, revealed that there is no difference between the two.

5. Further, Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai said that police encounters increased nine times in Jammu and Kashmir in 2021-22, highest in the country, followed by Assam where such cases rose by over four times against the previous year.

6. He also said in the Lok Sabha that the "Centre has asked state governments to take prompt steps for the identification of illegal Bangladeshi migrants staying in India." He added that "2,399 Bangladeshi nationals were intercepted and found using fraudulently obtained Indian documents in the last five years."

7. The Rajya Sabha was told that raids carried out by the Enforcement Directorate during 2014-22 saw a nearly 27-fold increase to 3,010 as compared to 112 searches between 2004 and 2014.

8. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also told the upper house that

   the Indian rupee has strengthened against the British Pound in 2022 though it has depreciated against the US dollar.

9. Earlier, reacting to the suspension of MPs, the TMC said in a tweet, "You can suspend us BUT YOU CANNOT SILENCE US! Deplorable situation - our Hon'ble MPs are trying to flag PEOPLE'S ISSUES but they are being suspended."

10. Congress MP Jairam Ramesh too, said, "With the suspension it is abundantly clear that Modi Sarkar is no mood to allow the Opposition to raise REAL, URGENT issues being faced by the people of our country in Parliament."