BJP moves privilege motion against Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi: BJP’s Bhupendra Yadav on Thursday moved a privilege motion in the Rajya Sabha against Congress president Rahul Gandhi for “intentionally” and with “malafide intention”  mocking leader of the house and finance minister Arun Jaitley name.

Moving the motion under Rule 187, the BJP MP urged the Chair to take notice of the alleged breach of Mr Jaitley’s privilege.

“The members of this House have dignity. The name of the leader of the house Arun Jaitley has been intentionally published by the Congress president with malafide intentions to defame this House...The way his (Jaitley’s) name has been tweeted by the Congress president on his Twitter handle, it comes in the category of (breach of) privilege. There are precedents such as that of NC Chatterjee in 1954. I request you to go to this precedent and issue a notice to Rahul Gandhi,” ,” Mr Yadav told the Chair.

Referring to a statement given by Mr Jaitley in the House on Wednesday, the Congress president had tweeted: “Dear Mr Jaitlie (sic) — thank you for reminding India that our PM never means what he says or says what he means.” The twitter post also carried video clippings of Mr Modi’s speech when he had mentioned a ‘secret meeting’ also attended by former prime minister Manmohan Singh and some Pakistani diplomats during an election rally in Gujarat and of Mr Jaitley speech in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

An effort was made by the government to reach out to the Congress to end the stalemate over the opposition party’s demand that the Prime Minister should clarify the remarks made against the former PM in an election rally in Gujarat. After series of meeting between the government managers and senior Congress leaders, Mr Jaitley made a statement in the Upper House clarifying Mr Modi’s comments when he said that the PM’s statement did not question nor or mean to question the commitment to the nation of Dr Singh or former vice president Hamid Ansari and any such perception was completely erroneous.