Home panel meeting turns acrimonious as BJP, Congress MPs trade barbs

A meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs on Tuesday witnessed sharp exchanges between BJP and Congress members after the Opposition pushed for a discussion on the police action against protesting students in Delhi on July 20.

According to sources, Congress members insisted that the incident, which occurred during a protest over the NEET paper leak row, fell within the committee's agenda of "crime against children." They argued that the panel should take up the matter.

The demand was met with a retort from a BJP member, who said that if the Congress was deviating from the agenda, he too wanted a discussion on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The member also accused the Congress of glorifying the late Sajjan Kumar, who was convicted for his role in the riots and died last week.

A Congress member retaliated by raising alleged fake encounters in Haryana, leading to a verbal altercation, particularly between BJP MP Tarun Chugh and Congress MP Jai Prakash. Committee chairman Radha Mohan Das Agrawal intervened and ordered the exchange to be excluded from the official record.

The Congress had submitted a letter on August 5 seeking a discussion on the July 20 police action at Jantar Mantar. When it was not taken up then, the members pressed for it during Tuesday's meeting.

Agrawal is learnt to have told the panel that the matter was pending before the Supreme Court and could not be discussed as per parliamentary rules. He, however, suggested that a future meeting could be held on the standard operating procedures for the use of force during protests, with officials from the concerned departments.

The committee also decided to keep both the Congress letter and the heated exchanges out of the proceedings' record.