A repeat of February 2023 as large parts of Rahul, Kharge speeches expunged

“Whatever I had to say, I have said and that is the truth. They can expunge as much as they want, but the truth will prevail,” a defiant Rahul Gandhi said Tuesday, a day after some parts of his first speech as the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, as part of the discussion on the Motion of Thanks to the President’s address, were expunged from the records.

Rahul also wrote to Speaker Om Birla claiming that the manner in which parts and portions of his address were expunged was “against parliamentary democracy”, and alleged that former Union minister Anurag Thakur’s speech “(that was) full of allegations” was not expunged. “I request that the remarks expunged from the records be restored,” he wrote.

Rahul’s consistent attacks on the PM and the BJP during his address Monday had provoked strong reaction from the Treasury Benches, and a rare intervention by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Correspondingly, large portions of the speech of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, who is the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, on Monday, attacking the RSS and Modi, were also expunged.

Monday’s expunctions thus drew an instant parallel to developments in Parliament in February last year, when large portions of Rahul’s speech in the Lok Sabha in relation to Modi and industrialist Gautam Adani were expunged. In all, 18 remarks he made during his 53-minute speech were removed from the records.

A day later, six remarks made by Kharge, then too LoP, Rajya Sabha, on the same issue were expunged. In his complaint to Rajya Sabha Chairman and Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Kharge said that any criticism of the government, its policies and their ramifications could never “lower the dignity of the House”.

With the relations between