Congress leader and Lok Sabha member Shashi Tharoor stepped down as the host of a talk show on state-run television channel Sansad TV. On Sansad TV, Tharoor hosts the talk show “To The Point”  following Shiv Sena lawmaker Priyanka Chaturvedi’s decision to quit as a programme host on the channel.

“I believed that my accepting Sansad TV’s invitation to host a show was in the best traditions of India’s parliamentary democracy, reaffirming the principle that our political differences did not prevent us, as Members of Parliament, from participating fully in various parliamentary institutions which belong to us all,” the MP from Thiruvananthapuram said, as quoted by PTI.

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“However, the prolonged suspension of 12 MPs from the Rajya Sabha, expelled in an arbitrary manner for actions committed during a previous session, has called into question the very assumption of a bipartisan spirit animating the work of Parliament,” he said.

In solidarity with the protesting MPs, Tharoor announced that he will suspend hosting of the Sansad TV talk show “To the Point” until the MPs’ suspensions are lifted and a “semblance of bipartisanship restored to the conduct of Parliament and the functioning of Sansad TV”. 

His statement comes a day after Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi, who is one of the 12 Rajya Sabha MPs who have been suspended, announced her resignation as the host of the Sansad TV show “Meri Kahaani”.  She wrote to Rajya Sabha chairman and vice-president M Venkaiah Naidu, expressing “great anguish” as well as “a sense of responsibility” for her constitutional duties.

The 12 opposition MPs — six from the Congress, two each from the Trinamool Congress and the Shiv Sena, and one from the CPI and CPI(M) — were suspended from the Rajya Sabha on Monday for the entire Winter Session of Parliament for their “unruly” behaviour during the previous session in August.