Stepping up their demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the Adani affair, MPs from 17 Opposition parties on Tuesday held a unique protest in Parliament, hanging a banner with images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and industrialist Gautam Adani from the first floor of the building.
The Trinamool Congress, which is following a lone path in the Opposition, held a separate protest by marching from its office inside Parliament House to Vijay Chowk and announced that a group of MPs will meet Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and heads of SEBI, SBI, LIC among others in Delhi from Thursday to present caps with a caption 'Arrest Adani'.
The parties also did not attend two meetings of floor leaders called by Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar to break the logjam in the House, saying there was no point in the meeting with the government “disrupting” the proceedings. Dhankhar took exception to the absence of the parties, saying it was “unwholesome and inappropriate”.
The protest by the Opposition on Adani affair and counter protest by the BJP demanding Rahul Gandhi's apology for his 'democracy in danger' remarks abroad led to another day of disruption in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, though the Lower House cleared budget related bills and supplementary grants to Jammu and Kashmir amid din.
Both the Houses were adjourned for Thursday, after declaring a holiday for Wednesday as several parts of the country are celebrating regional new years.
Before the Parliament convened for business, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge chaired a meeting of Opposition parties where the final touches for an "innovative" protest was given.
As both the Houses were adjourned till 2 PM minutes after it was convened at 11 AM, Opposition MPs came to the SBI office on the first floor of Parliament with posters that read 'Modani, We Want JPC' and shouted slogans like 'Modi, Adani bhai bhai, desh bechkar ghai malai' (Modi, Adani are brothers, Together they sold the country). SBI has given loans to Adani Group.
MPs from parties like Congress, AAP, BRS, DMK, CPI(M), CPI, RJD, NCP and SP among others hung a huge banner from the first floor with images of Modi and Adani, which had a tagline 'We Want JPC'.
This was the fourth protest action by the joint Opposition since the start of the second leg of Budget Session on March 13. Earlier, it held a march to the Enforcement Directorate in a bid to file a complaint against Adani Group, a human chain and a 'Gandhian Satyagraha' in Parliament premises and there are plans to approach the President on the issue.
Separately, Trinamool Congress MPs marched from their office inside the Parliament House shouting slogans to Vijay Chowk wearing caps with inscription 'Arrest Adani'. All the Trinamool MPs signed the caps.
"All our MPs have signed all the caps. Now a group of MPs will be going to different institutions. We will first go to the Ministry of Finance to meet Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and present this cap. Similarly, we will also give such caps to heads of SEBI, LIC, SBI offices in Delhi," Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha floor leader Derek O'Brien said.
Trinamool Congress leaders dismissed allegations that their party was soft on Adani issue saying they were the only party that had straight away demanded the arrest of the industrialist.