Parliament adjourned sine die, TMC slams 'delay'

NEW DELHI: Opposition Trinamool Congress, which was the first party to demand closing down the Budget Session of Parliament early, in the face of a threat from the spread of coronavirus, has accused the Centre of dragging on the session for weeks, after the House was finally adjourned sine die on Monday by hurriedly passing the finance bill. On Sunday, TMC chief Mamata Banerjee had decided that the party’s MPs will pull out from attending Parliament, if the House continued to run in the Budget Session.
Party MP and spokesperson Derek O’Brien on Monday wrote in his blog after the House was closed for the session, that he was surprised how even after canceling the Holi celebrations to ensure social distancing Parliament kept functioning and even Rashtrapati Bhawan invitations for state-wise interaction with MPs with the President continued in batches, in the face of growing spread of the coronavirus.
“The Prime Minister and the President had announced cancellation of Holi festivities. So why where these grand breakfast meetings continuing? I was left very confused by the grandstanding,” he wrote.
If senior TMC MP Saugata Roy was the first one to take up the issue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself more than a week ago that the House should be called off hurriedly as there was a threat of the Corona virus spreading, only to be turned down, another of his party colleagues in the Upper House, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, who was the first parliamentarian to go in for self-isolation without any symptom or travel history, to take precaution from catching the flu, wrote to Rajya Sabha chairman M Venkaiah Naidu last week asking for leave from the House for the rest of the session, and returned to his home in Kolkata to ensure that he was maintaining complete social isolation
In fact, panic struck the House only last Friday, when it came to be known that BJP MP Dushyant Singh had attended a private gathering where another guest Bollywood singer Kanika Kapoor was also present and she later tested positive for the Covid-19 having travelled back from London. It also transpired that he had been to a Rashtrapati Bhawan breakfast meeting with the President and other members of Parliament from Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, sat in Lok Sabha chamber, in Central Hall, attended parliamentary standing committee meeting and other private social functions, before going into self-quarantine after Kapoor tested positive.
Over the weekend the government took a call and shut the House on Monday after hurriedly passing the finance bill. Many MPs including O’Brien and Varun Gandhi, who had met him went into self isolation since they got to know about Singh’s exposure to a corona-infected Kapoor.