Rajya Sabha on Friday witnessed a lighter moment when Congress MP Pramod Tiwari asked chairman Jadgeep Dhankhar about the number of times he has fallen in love. Discussing a point of order against the chairman’s decision to expunge parts of the Leader of Opposition’s speech on the motion of thanks to President’s address, Tiwari said that Mallikarjun Kharge had “written a poem in your love.”
To this Dhankhar asked “shero shayari se mohabbat hoti hai ya mohabbat se shero shayari hoti hai? ( Is poetry a result of love or does love lead to poetry?)”
Tiwari quipped, “aapne kitni baar pyar kiya hai? (how many times have you fallen in love?)”
“Since everyone loves you. The LoP has recited a poem,” Tiwari said. At this Dhankhar merely smiled and did not give any reply.
Congress MPs objected to Dhankhar deleting some portions of Kharge’s speech from official records, saying he used no unparliamentary words and some of the expressions he employed were earlier used even by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. They questioned Dhankhar’s rationale behind removing several parts of Kharge’s speech, including a word from the poem he had quoted.
Kharge said these were the same words that were used in the House on previous occasions as well. “Vajpayee had used the same expression for (ex-Prime Minister) P V Narasimha Rao. It is still part of the record, you can see that.”
Dhankhar, however, ruled out a review saying he has already taken a call.
“The members of the House write something to me and it is posted on Twitter within two minutes. This is not right, it is a violation of the rules. I have to talk about this with all of you, which will be done after the session,” Dhankhar said.
(With ANI inputs)
