NEW DELHI: On the second day, the Congress MPs dharna against the suspension of their 25 colleagues was joined by six other Opposition parties.
But even as Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh protested vociferously, there did not seem any overtures from the ruling side. And as a suspended Congress MP put it, “What is the point of revocation of the order? We are not going to go back on our demand for Sushma Swaraj’s resignation or that of the two BJP CMs.”
Since the Congress is not ready to throw its placards behind and the government is not ready to ask its top ministers to resign, there’s hardly any scope of resolution of the deadlock.
The BJP, however, faced embarrassment when of one of its MPs, Shatrughan Sinha, tweeted that he was against the Speaker’s decision to suspend so many members, one of whom was not even present in the House.
Of the Opposition members who joined the dharna were Sharad Yadav and K C Tyagi of the JD(U), Dharmendra Yadav of the SP, Jaya Prakash Narayan Yadav of the RJD, P Karunakaran of the CPM, D Raja of the CPI and E Ahamed of the IUML.
Sonia also raised slogans. “End dictatorship”, “Prime Minister break silence” “where have the ’achhe din’ have gone,” “Sushma Swaraj resign” were among the slogans raised by the protesters, who also carried black flags.