Venkaiah Naidu refers privilege notice against Rahul Gandhi to Lok Sabha

NEW DELHI: Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday referred a privilege notice served by BJP MP Bhupinder Yadav against Congress President Rahul Gandhi to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.

Naidu said the matter fell under the purview of the Lok Sabha as rules require the notice to be sent to the Speaker of the Lower House if the member against whom the notice is served is its member.

During the Zero Hour on the last day of the Winter Session, BJP MP Bhupendra Yadav questioned the progress of his privilege notice, to which Naidu said it was under consideration.

"Your notice is under my consideration. I have already told you, I will be taking action immediately, but it's not within the purview of Rajya Sabha, finally, it has to go to Lok Sabha. I will take a necessary decision at the earliest," the Chairman said.

On December 28, Yadav had given notice under Rule 187 alleging that the Congress President had "intentionally, maliciously and disrespectfully twisted" the name of Leader of the House and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in a tweet, spelling his name as 'Jait-lie'.

In his notice to the Chairman of the Upper House, Yadav had called the tweet as imputing "motives to the intent, character and conduct of the Leader of the House, Shri Arun Jaitley, and the twist as "highly derogatory and extremely unbecoming" on the part of Gandhi. He had accused that Gandhi had "deliberately misinterpreted the proceedings of the Rajya Sabha in order to malign the Government".

Gandhi, a Lok Sabha member, had tweeted in connection with Jaitley's statement after an agreement to end an impasse in the Upper House was reached between the treasury and opposition benches over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks against his predecessor Manmohan Singh during the Gujarat Assembly election campaign.

"Your notice is under my consideration. I have already told you, I will be taking action immediately, but it's not within the purview of Rajya Sabha, finally, it has to go to Lok Sabha. I will take a necessary decision at the earliest," the Chairman said.

The House was adjourned sine die later in the day.

Earlier, Naidu asked ministers to take prior permission along with reasons from the Chair for allowing their colleagues to lay papers in the House on their behalf. 

He also remarked that when Parliament is in session, ministers should give 'priority to Parliament'.