The winter session of Parliament took off on a stormy note on Monday. The upper and the lower house saw disruptions as Lok Sabha passed the Bill repealing the three farm laws without any discussion. Rajya Sabha passed it after a brief intervention by Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge.

Later, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Prahlad Joshi sought the approval of the House for suspending 12 Rajya Sabha MPs (six of the Congress, two each of the Trinamool Congress and Shiv Sena, and one each of CPI and CPI-M) for the remainder of the session.

Also read: 12 Rajya Sabha MPs suspended for causing ruckus in last Parliament winter session

The reason for their suspension was “their unprecedented acts of misconduct, contemptuous, unruly and violent behaviour and intentional attacks on security personnel” on the last day of the monsoon session.

So, what happened in Rajya Sabha during the monsoon session?

Parliament has seen continuous disruptions since the passage of the farm laws in the 2020 monsoon session too. When the Bills came up for discussion in Rajya Sabha, Opposition MPs demanded their scrutiny by a Select Committee.

Several MPs hurled papers at Deputy Chairman Harivansh. This led to the suspension of six Opposition MPs. Parliament passed the Bills without scrutiny by a committee.

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In this year’s monsoon session, Opposition parties were asking for a discussion on the alleged Pegasus hacking and farm laws issues. When Electronics & Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw was making a statement on Pegasus in Rajya Sabha, Trinamool Congress MP Shantanu Sen snatched the papers from him.

This was followed by a heated exchange between Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and Sen, who alleged that the minister threatened and verbally abused him. Rajya Sabha suspended Sen for the rest of the monsoon session.

Disruptions marred both Houses throughout the session, which ended with a melee in Rajya Sabha. Opposition MPs accused security staff of manhandling them, and in turn, Leader of the House Piyush Goel accused Opposition MPs of attacking the security staff and demanding a special committee to investigate the incident.