Opposition members in the Rajya Sabha stalled question hour for nearly 10 minutes over the continued absence of Union Chemicals and Fertilizers Minister M.K. Azhagiri from the House. This comes a day after the matter was raised in the Lok Sabha.
The issue was raised by AIADMK member V. Maitreyan, who sought to know from Chairman Hamid Ansari whether the DMK Minister, who is currently abroad, had sought permission of the House before absenting himself.
Mr. Maitreyan, asked to raise the supplementary pertaining to the Chemical and Fertilizer Ministry, said: “I would like to know whether a Minister [without naming Mr. Azhagiri] who is normally absent from the House and is currently abroad has taken the Chair's permission before proceeding on leave.”
Mr. Ansari asked Mr. Maitreyan to pose his supplementary and that the matter of absence could be discussed later in his chamber.
However, Mr. Maitreyan kept insisting on whether Mr. Azhagiri had sought permission before going on leave. He was joined by Bharatiya Janata Party members Prakash Jawadekar, Rudra Narayan Pany and Vinay Katiyar, who also sought to know why the Minister was always absent.
Mr. Pany and Mr. Katiyar went to the extent of saying that though it had been a year since the UPA came back to power, Mr. Azhagiri had never come to the House.
While the Opposition members kept raising the issue despite the Chair's pleas to allow question hour to proceed, the Congress's Rajiv Shukla, Santosh Bagrodia, V. Hanumantha Rao and T. Subbarami Reddy insisted that when Minister of State Srikant Jena was replying to the question, there was no point in raising the issue.
Noisy scenes prevailed when T. Siva of the DMK and Congress members took exception to Mr. Maitreyan not asking his supplementary question. They were countered by BJP members, who again raised the issue of Mr. Azhagiri's prolonged absence.
‘All are accountable'
At this point, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley pointed out that the Opposition had been raising this issue week after week.
“All Ministers are accountable to Parliament. However, in this case, are we accepting the position that one Minister is not accountable to Parliament? If this is the case, then we can proceed with question hour,” he said.
To this, Mr. Ansari said this was a wider issue that needed to be discussed, but not during question hour. Mr. Jaitley, however, said that at some stage, the Chairman would have to see the fact that one Minister was not accountable.
DMK leader and IT Minister A. Raja objected to the remark, while Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office Prithviraj Chavan said a Deputy Minister was authorised to reply to supplementaries.
