Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, nearly cried in the Lok Sabha, when Left party leaders Basudev Acharya and Gurudas Das Gupta attacked him by quoting rules for not allowing them to speak after he had rejected the no confidence motion against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The motion was moved by the Left parties after Dr Singh refused to report to the House.
Visibly moved by the attitude of the Left parties, the speaker said in a choked voice that they were delibrately doing so to denigrate him.
"If the House wants me to go, I will do so right now," he said before asking Deputy Speaker Charanjit Singh to preside over the proceedings of the House.
He asked Das Gupta whether he sought the permission of the chair before speaking and that he had not given any permission.
Dr Singh, in his speech on July 22, 2008, had promised to let the proceedings go on and come to Parliament before operationalising the nuclear agreement.
The speaker, while rejecting the privilege motion, said Dr Singh was a member of the other House. Neither House of Parliament can claim or exercise any authority over a member of the other House, according to the Kaul and Shakdher report.
Dwelling on the issue of the procedure, Chatterjee said that Kaul and Shakdher agreed that the privilege issue can be raised only in that House where the individual concerned is a member.
Since Dr Singh is a member of the Rajya Sabha, no privilege case is out against him.
In his four-page order, the speaker said that he had to be satisfied the complainant had given a document that a breach of privilege has been committed.
He quoted from the Kaul and Shakdher report extensively to establish that non implementation of an assurance given by a minister on the floor of the House is neither a break of privilege nor a contempt of the House.
"In view of the above, I am not satisfied that a breah of privilege has been committed by the prime minister. No reference to the presiding officer of the other House is, therefore required. Accordingly, I have disallowed the notices of question of privilege," he said in his order.
