Date:04/05/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/05/04/stories/2008050459300900.htm

National

List of MPs selective, says BJP

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies will meet here on Monday to discuss what steps they need to take with Lok Sabha Speaker referring the matter of disorderly conduct by their MPs to the Committee on Privileges.

“A meeting of the NDA has been called on Monday and let us see what we decide to do,” the BJP Deputy Leader in the Lok Sabha, V.K. Malhotra, said on Saturday. He added that the parties need to see what the Speaker had done in the matter of MPs from other political parties such as the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Samajwadi Party who had created similar ruckus in the House on various issues.

“The list of MPs sent by the Speaker to the Privileges Committee is selective,” Mr. Malhotra alleged. He insisted that MPs of parties outside the National Democratic Alliance had often in the past indulged in behaviour similar to that of the NDA MPs, whose case was referred to the Committee on Privileges.

Of the 32 names referred to the Committee by the Speaker, 31 are from the NDA, while one is from the BSP.