Privilege motion against PM under consideration:Speaker

Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Wednesday said the notices for initiating breach of privilege proceedings against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman submitted by Congress leaders were under consideration.

Mahajan made the remark soon after Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Jyotiraditya Scindia had mentioned the notices for moving a breach of privilege motion against Modi and Sitharaman respectively.

“I hereby give notice of my intention to move a privilege motion against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for making a misleading statement in his speech on the debate of the 'No Confidence Motion' in the Lok Sabha on 20th July, 2018,” Kharge said in the Lok Sabha.

A similar notice against the Defence Minister was read out by Scindia, the chief whip of the Congress in the Lok Sabha.

“It (notices) is under my consideration,” the Lok Sabha Speaker said amid demands from the Treasury benches for allowing them to submit a notice against Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

As the protests continued, the Speaker ticked off Parliamentary Affairs Minister Anant Kumar saying that the BJP member Anurag Thakur had already submitted the notice against Gandhi on Tuesday.

Congress member K C Venugopal said if the Speaker was to allow BJP member to mention the privilege motion against Gandhi once again, then she should give time to another member to mention the motion against the prime minister.

Five Congress members had submitted the notices of the breach of privilege motion against the prime minister and five others against the defence minister.

Congress members had charged the prime minister and the defence minister with misleading the House on the purchase price of Rafale fighter aircraft contending that the matter was governed by a confidentiality clause in the inter-government agreement signed by India and France.

“The prime minister has along with the defence minister deliberately misled the House. It is, therefore, requested that this notice of breach of privilege be accepted and referred to the privilege committee for further proceedings,” as per the notice against Modi and Sitharaman.

Thakur, who was allowed by the Speaker to speak briefly, alleged that Gandhi had misled the House during the no-confidence motion debate on July 20.