New Delhi: With the 18th Lok Sabha set to resume functioning, it is perhaps an occasion to also look back at the status of the 146 members of Opposition parties who were summarily suspended from both Houses of parliament during the term of the last Lok Sabha.
Lower House Speaker Om Birla and Rajya Sabha chairperson Jagdeep Dhankar had carried out that unprecedented move on behalf of a ruling party riding on a brute majority.
Also, as many as 22 from the suspension list of the opposition Lok Sabha MPs didn’t contest the 2024 elections. Meanwhile, one suspended MP, A Ganesha Murthy, belonging to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), passed away.
This time around though, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi and his deputy Amit Shah, couldn’t reach even the simple majority mark in parliament to form its own government, while the number of Opposition MPs in the Lok Sabha has risen.
No wonder then, an emboldened Opposition is set to contest for the post of the Lok Sabha Speaker, as against the government’s decision to most likely bring back Birla who had allowed the Modi government to throw out so many Opposition MPs from the last winter session for a lark.
Even as the drama is unfolding at parliament, checking the current status of those Opposition MPs suspended by Birla from the lower house in December 2023 throws up a bouquet of interesting facts.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Three suspended MPs are now Modi’s ministers
The one that tops the list is this: three of those suspended MPs are now ministers in the current Modi-led government. One of them, Ravneet Singh Bittu, then a Congress Lok Sabha (LS) MP from Ludhiana, has now been accommodated in the new government, even after losing the elections on a BJP ticket.
In the run-up to the general elections, Bittu, grandson of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, had jumped to the BJP, and contested from Ludhiana on its ticket. The voters of that parliamentary constituency chose the Congress once again, which meant Bittu had to bite the dust. He turned out to be a wrong poll bet for the BJP which usually poaches candidates of Opposition parties only based on their ability to win an election for the party.
In spite of that poll upset, Bittu has been accommodated in the Cabinet though – as a minister of state for food processing and railways, a gesture which comes across as an outreach of the party to the Sikh community who are peeved at the BJP and its supporters currently for terming their protesting farmers and others as Khalistanis, or separatists.
Another suspended Congress MP who later shifted to the BJP and contested these general elections on its ticket is Geeta Koda. She too lost, from Singhbhum. The seat remained with the opposition; Joba Mahi of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) pocketed it.
An MP from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Sushil Kumar Rinku, who was also suspended from the last winter session, later moved to the BJP, and contested from his parliamentary constituency Jalandhar. Like Ludhiana and Singhbhum, the seat went to the Opposition while the voters rejected the earlier face. Former Congress chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi won the Jalandhar seat by a considerable margin.
These three instances only highlight the BJP’s poll strategy to pocket these Opposition bastions by stealing their sitting MPs, but unsuccessfully so.
Yet another opposition member thrown out of the winter session was Rajiv Ranjan Singh, also called Lallan Singh, a Janata Dal (United) LS MP from Munger. JD (U) had by then walked out of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to form a government with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar. Eleven of JD (U) LS and RS members found themselves on the suspension list of MPs for the last winter session.
Singh has won the seat once again and is now a cabinet minister in the Modi government – the minister of fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying.
One more JD (U ) MP thrown out of the Rajya Sabha last winter, Ram Nath Thakur, has also found himself in the current government — as minister of state for agriculture and farmers’ welfare. Thakur, leader of the Janata Dal (United) at the Rajya Sabha (RS), is the son of the former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur.
Since both Bittu and Thakur come from political families, it also weakens the BJP’s oft-taken line that under Modi, it is fully averse to dynastic politics. What is to be noted here is also the apparent lack of political ethics that the party once took pride in. None other than its former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had famously reminded the parliament in 1996 of the need for him to step down from power than indulging in acts that might go beyond the ambit of political ethics.
Where are the rest of the suspended JD (U) MPs
While another suspended LS MP from the JD (U), Dulal Chandra Goswami, lost his seat, Kathiar, to the Congress in these polls, Chandreshwar Prasad lost his seat, Jehanabad, to the RJD.
Four others from the party now in the government who have returned to the lower house are – Kaushalendra Kumar (Nalanda), Giridhari Yadav (Banka), Alok Kumar Suman (Gopalganj) and Dileshwar Kamati (Supaul).
A Rajya Sabha member of the party, Angel Prasad Hegde, also suspended from the winter session, is now no longer in the Opposition. Two of the JD (U) Lok Sabha MPs who didn’t contest these general elections were Mahabali Singh and Sunil Kumar Singh.
Most suspended opposition MPs are back in parliament
While the strike rate of the suspended MPs of the JD (U) is good, so is of the MPs from the Opposition parties. As many as 52 of them have returned to the Lok Sabha.
While the term of some of the seven Opposition MPs in the Rajya Sabha has since expired, the rest of the suspended MPs continue to be in the upper house.
Also, as many as 20 from the suspension list of the opposition Lok Sabha MPs didn’t contest the 2024 polls. Meanwhile, one suspended MP, A Ganesha Murthy, belonging to the DMK, passed away.
Two other MPs who have also returned to the house after they were summarily disqualified from the last Lok Sabha, are Rahul Gandhi and Mahua Moitra. Gandhi won two LS seats handsomely.
Om Birla Ji is NDA speaker candidate. Hope he realises that with 234 of us this time his “Naw Baithiye” won’t be as easy to implement.
— Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) June 25, 2024
Taking all these facts into consideration, what can be held up is this: while the former speaker Birla had suspended the MPs summarily from the entire winter session only because they belonged to the Opposition benches in the Lok Sabha, their electorate has, however, yet again, returned them to the temple of democracy as their representatives.
Only time will tell us if the Opposition MPs would be allowed in this Lok Sabha by the new speaker to particularly deliberate on crucial bills before they are passed by the Houses. The three new criminal laws, which would come into effect from July 1 and have provisions that run the risk of turning India into a police state, were passed while the Opposition MPs remained suspended from both Houses of parliament.
