Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar on Wednesday did not accept two notices under Rule 267 of the House for discussion on the border issue with China and rising prices of essential commodities and said they were not in order.
He assured Opposition members that he will invoke Rule 267 on merit. Dhankhar had given a similar assurance to the MPs while rejecting six notices under Rule 267 on Tuesday.
Under Rule 267 of Rajya Sabha’s Rules of Procedures and Conduct of Business, a listed business of the day can be suspended to take up an urgent matter with the Chair’s approval.
After the listed papers were laid on the table of the House during Zero Hour, Dhankar said he had received notices from TMC’s Dola Sen and Congress member Pramod Tiwari for suspension of rules under Rule 267. “The same is not in order,” he said on Sen’s notice on rising prices.
Tiwari’s notice was over “illegal and unprovoked Chinese transgressions” in Depsang Plains and parts of Arunachal Pradesh. Dhankhar said the notice lacked in every element of Rule 267.
Observing that his predecessors have invoked Rule 267 during their respective tenures, the Chairman said the number has never been in double digits during their five-year tenure. “But I am not a statistics-driven person. If there is an occasion, I will invoke the rule. If there is no occasion, I will not invoke it,” he said.
Dhankhar also noted that on December 12 he had requested leaders of parties to allocate seats among their members for the sake of convenience and for compliance with rules in identifying from which seat the member whose name has been called is speaking from. He said that the request “has not drawn the desired attention till date. Parties, including the Congress, AAP, TRS, Shiv Sena, and JD(U), are yet to allocate seats amongst their members.”
He asked the parties concerned to forward the details without further delay to the table during the course of the day.
