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Informist, Wednesday, Mar. 11, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – Union Home Minister Amit Shah Wednesday said in the Lok Sabha that the microphone of any member defying the rules of the House would be turned off in the future, too. He was replying to the discussion on a resolution moved by the Opposition to remove Om Birla from the post of speaker. The resolution was later rejected by a voice vote.

 

"No matter whether it's a minister or an Opposition member, whoever is not abiding by the rules while speaking, their mic. will be turned off, and it should be turned off," Shah said.

 

The home minister said the speaker's "first duty" is to maintain order and decorum in the House. "If I digress from the topic, the Chair will naturally ask me to sit down," he said. "Then I cannot complain that I am not being allowed to speak. One has to abide by the rules."

 

Replying to the Opposition's charge that Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi was not allowed to speak on the motion of thanks for the president's address and his microphone was switched off, Shah said the Congress leader continued to quote from a magazine and an unpublished book despite Defence Minister Rajnath Singh urging him not to do so. "You have the rights, but no special privileges," he said.

 

He said the speaker has the right to warn, name, and also suspend members under the Lok Sabha rules. "We can always disagree with the speaker's ruling, but we cannot question the integrity of the Chair," Shah said, emphasising that a resolution to remove the speaker was "very extraordinary" and his party had never brought such a resolution when it was in the Opposition.

 

He pointed out that during the 17th Lok Sabha--when, too, Birla was the speaker--the Indian National Congress had got 157 hours and 55 minutes to speak though it had only 55 members in the House. The BJP had got 349 hours though it had 303 members. "On pro rata basis, the Congress got six times the BJP's time," Shah said. In the current 18th Lok Sabha, the Congress with 99 members has got 71 hours so far while the BJP with 239 members has got 122 hours, he said.

 

Shah also wondered why Gandhi was not speaking on a resolution brought by his own party. "Either he doesn't want to speak or he doesn't know how to speak within the rules," he remarked. The Opposition benches protested noisily at several points during Shah's speech.

 

Earlier, former Union ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad and Anurag Thakur of the Bharatiya Janata Party, K.C. Venugopal and Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav of the Congress, Saayoni Ghosh of the All India Trinamool Congress, Asaduddin Owaisi of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, and Krishna Prasad Tenneti of the Telugu Desam Party spoke on the resolution Wednesday.  End

 

Reported by Asim Khan

Edited by Rajeev Pai

 

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