Privilege notice against Rahul Gandhi

Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu has referred the privilege notice against Congress president Rahul Gandhi over his comments on Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.

Officials on Saturday said Naidu forwarded the notice given by BJP's Rajya Sabha MP Bhupendra Yadav to Mahajan as Gandhi is a Lok Sabha member.

"Prima facie there is a question of privilege against Rahul Gandhi," a TV report said quoting Naidu.

After Yadav asked the fate of his notice in Rajya Sabha on Friday, Naidu had said that the notice is against a Lok Sabha member and he would take the appropriate action.

Yadav had given notice on breach of privilege referring to Gandhi's tweet where he spelt Jaitley as "Jaitlie", saying it was derogatory. In his tweet on 27 December 2017, Gandhi said, "Dear Mr Jaitlie thank you for reminding India that our PM never means what he says or says what he means. #BJPLies."

Gandhi was referring to Jaitley's clarification in Rajya Sabha that Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not question nor did he mean to question, the commitment to this nation" of either his predecessor Manmohan Singh or former vice president Hamid Ansari. The tweet had come soon after Jaitley's comments in Rajya Sabha.

Jaitley's clarification came after a series of negotiations with Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad over the stalemate in the Upper House following Modi's remarks during an election rally in Gujarat. Modi had referred to a dinner meeting attended by Singh and others in the honour of former Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri and said they were trying to conspire with Pakistan to defeat BJP in Gujarat elections.