Tuesday saw an eventful meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for the Waqf (Amendment) Bill 2024, which even involved bloodshed.
All the meetings of the committee so far have seen fireworks between members from the opposition and ruling sides. However, there were unprecedented scenes on Tuesday when two members of Parliament from West Bengal took potshots at each other. Retired Calcutta High Court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay, who is now a BJP MP and Trinamool Congress’s Kalyan Banerjee got into an aggressive argument, largely in Bengali, making it difficult for the other members to understand.
Sources said that during the argument, in anger, the BJP leader called Banerjee a “resident of a red light area” which infuriated the TMC MP who retorted with abuses, then picked up a glass bottle from his table, broke it, and allegedly tried to throw it at the Chair who he felt was not reacting effectively to this altercation.
Immediately after this, Kalyan had to be taken for medical attention, having injured his hand and then received five stitches. Further, BJP MPs urged the Chair for action against Banerjee. The Lok Sabha Speaker’s office was immediately informed of the development, and when the meeting resumed after a break, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey moved the motion to demand Kalyan Banerjee’s suspension from the proceedings for a full day. The motion was put to vote, and the BJP-led NDA was able to get it passed with a majority of nine votes while the opposition had eight.
Kalyan Banerjee was escorted out by opposition MPs as he left the meeting. Upon the insistence of opposition MPs, the ruling side agreed to keep the suspension demand from the committee for just a day. Many opposition lawmakers argued that the bottle Banerjee tried to throw did not hit anyone.
However, the seriousness of the issue has been conveyed to the Lok Sabha Speaker, with JPC chairman Jagdambika Pal insisting that a strong note be taken of this case. “Attempt to hit anybody can be as dangerous as hitting anyone. Tomorrow, one thing can lead to the other, and MPs have a privilege protecting them, but can they also play with the law,” Pal said.
The JPC meeting continued with other members of Parliament attending and representatives from the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) deposing.
The war of words witnessed in Bengal between the BJP and TMC has now entered Parliament committees. Abhijit Gangopadhyay and Kalyan Banerjee have had several heated exchanges in the past as well.
In a recent meeting of the committee focused on land in Mumbai, a representative disposing before the panel in support of the bill was heckled by Banerjee. Following this, an argument took place between him and Shiv Sena MP Naresh Mhaske. The MP from the Eknath Shinde camp stood up and supported the representative who, despite being a Muslim, backed the bill. According to reports, an FIR was filed against Banerjee and the Maharashtra government decided to provide additional security to the land.
According to sources, some MPs have said that Kalyan Banerjee has been “unnecessarily aggressive” on multiple occasions during meetings, and, along with a couple of other lawmakers, has heckled new members of Parliament like Medha Kulkarni from the BJP.
In the second half of the meeting on Tuesday, JPC chairman Jagdambika Pal left, and while exiting expressed his displeasure over what happened, saying that in his entire political career, spanning over four decades, he had never witnessed such scenes in Parliament.
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