Om Birla asks Harsimrat Badal to avoid making political statements; Chabbewal, Mehdi rile Lok Sabha Speaker on day one

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, June 26

Lok Sabha MPs from the region on Wednesday drew the ire of newly elected Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla while he was accepting greetings of members post his elevation to the chair of the presiding officer.

The first one to be slammed by Birla was Harsimrat Kaur Badal, the lone Lok Sabha MP from the Shiromani Akali Dal, when she taunted some MPs for “compromising their ideologies to get elected”.

Birla asked her to avoid making political statements on the very first day under the new Speaker.

Badal went on to urge the Speaker to “give more time than he gave in the 17th Lok Sabha to MPs from regional parties of smaller states.”

“Have I not given you time to speak earlier,” an irate Birla asked Badal to which she said, “Yes, you have, just requesting you to give more time than earlier.”

Then, AAP MP from Hoshiarpur Raj Kumar Chhabewal was flagged by Birla after he raised the issue of the opposition not being given the deputy speaker’s post.

“During Atal Behari Vajpayee’s governmentm the speaker was from the TDP,” Chhabewal said, provoking the Speaker who asked him to take his seat.

Srinagar MP Agha Mehdi’s provocation was the gravest with the Speaker having to cut him short.

“If MPs of this house can be called terrorists, anyone anywhere can be called so,” Mehdi said, adding that the bill to abrogate Article 370 in J&K was brought and passed within half an hour, a charge Birla refuted saying the bill was discussed for nearly nine hours.