Savarkar Issue Rocks Parliament

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New Delhi, Aug 19: Both Houses of Parliament were rocked on Thursday over the Veer Savarkar issue. While Lok Sabha was adjourned twice, Rajya Sabha could not function beyond zero hour. Opposition members stalled proceedings, demanding an apology from petroleum minister Mani Shankar Aiyar for showing “disrespect” to Savarkar.

Speaker Somnath Chatterjee adjourned Lok Sabha in the morning. When the House assembled again after lunch, it was abruptly adjourned for the day over a remark by Janata Dal (United) member Prabhunath Singh against the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) member R K Rana.

The RJD member had interrupted him while voicing his protest against the “humiliation” meted out to Savarkar.

After repeated pleas to restore normalcy did not help, the Speaker adjourned the House. Shiv Sena leader Anant Geete, supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been demanding an apology from Mr Aiyar for allegedly issuing instructions for removal of a plaque containing Savarkar’s quotations from a memorial at Port Blair’s cellular jail.

Rajya Sabha also witnessed unruly scenes with deputy chairman K Rehman Khan adjourning the house twice.

The Opposition benches wanted to raise the issue during the time for calling attention but the chair denied permission. When the deputy chairman asked Sanjay Nirupam (Shiv Sena) to call attention of finance minister on the increasing cases of frauds in private sector banks and merger of Global Trust Bank with Oriental Bank of Commerce, the latter raised the Savarkar issue again.

This led to heated exchanges between BJP and Shiv Sena benches on one side and the Left and Congress members on the other.

Earlier in the Rajya Sabha, Telugu Desam party (TDP) members accused the government of not giving adequate protection to their party members who, they said, were being attacked and killed allegedly by Congressmen in Andhra Pradesh.

Raising the matter during zero hour, TDP leader Ravuluchandra Sekar Reddy said the post-poll violence against his workers was continuing and 24 TDP workers had been killed so far, mostly in Anantpur district.