Rajya Sabha adjourned for day over SIR issue
The Upper House was adjourned for the day little after 2 p.m. on Monday (July 28, 2025), after being adjourned twice in the pre-lunch sitting.
Also Read: Parliament Monsoon session LIVE Day 6 | July 28, 2025
During the Zero Hour, Deputy Chairman Harivansh said he has received 26 notices under Rule 267 demanding discussion on various issues, including SIR and alleged discrimination against Bengali migrant workers in other states.
He declined all the adjournment notices and called Sudha Murty (nominated member) to make her Zero Hour mention.
However, Opposition members, including those from the TMC and the Congress, were on their feet protesting against the Chair's decision.
They were raising slogans like 'Vote Ki Chori Band Karo' (stop vote theft), and the Chair adjourned the proceedings till 12 noon.
As soon as the House re-assembled for the Question Hour at 12 noon, various Opposition MPs were on their feet and Sushmita Dev (TMC) trooped into the Well, and sought to raise various issues. As the din continued, the proceedings were adjourned again till 2 p.m.
When the Upper House met at 2 p.m., the Chair tried to continue the debate on The Carriage of Goods by Sea Bill 2025. However, Opposition MPs continued to raise slogans demanding a debate on the SIR issue and that the exercise be stopped.
Some MPs also trooped into the Well of the House. Amid the din, the Chair adjourned the House for the day.
Earlier, as the House met for the day, newly elected Rajya Sabha members I.S. Inbadurai and M. Dhanapal, both AIADMK, were administered oath.
The deputy chairman also informed the House that notices must be submitted digitally, noting that some members are still submitting physical notices.
He said all notices can be submitted via the Digital Sansad portal.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
Bengali migrant workers and Indian citizenship: In the name of a nation
Nazimuddin Mondal (34) recalls that he was slapped before being asked to sing the national anthem. 'At the police station they told me to sing it and then checked my phone to see if there were any phone numbers from Bangladesh,' he says. Mr. Mondal says life had been going smoothly for about a year and a half in Mumbai's Nalasopara area, where he lived on rent. With a daily wage of ₹1,300, the migrant from Tartipur village in Murshidabad district, West Bengal, had come to Maharashtra to work. On June 9, 2025, there was a knock on his door. Men in uniform had come for him. They took him to the local police station. Mr. Mondal recalls that there were 13 Bengali-speaking men at the police station. Then began a journey of about 2,500 kilometres spanning six days. From the police station in Mumbai, Mr. Mondal says he and a few others were taken for a medical check-up, then driven to Pune the next morning. He recalls that they were put on a flight from Pune to West Bengal, their hands in zip-ties. After landing somewhere in north Bengal, Mr. Mondal says he was driven along the international border in the early hours of one morning and pushed into Bangladesh. 'The men in plainclothes forced me to cross the border. It was the scariest day of my life,' he says. He was handed ₹300 in Bangladeshi currency, a packet of food, and a bottle of water. ''You all are Bangladeshis,' the man told me in Bengali, threatening to shoot me if I tried to return.' On June 14, 2025, a video of him and two others, Minarul Sheikh and Mostafa Kamal Sheikh, both also migrant workers from West Bengal, allegedly picked up by the police in Maharashtra, surfaced on social media. Sitting in an open field, the men cried out to the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for help: 'Mamata (Banerjee) Didi please save us... We have been pushed into Bangladesh.' The next day, the three were repatriated through the India-Bangladesh border close to Mekhliganj town of Cooch Behar district, West Bengal. Across India, thousands of Bengali-speaking migrants are being asked for documentation to prove their Indian citizenship. The crackdown began, say sources in the Home Ministry, after the regime change in Bangladesh in August 2024. The questioning intensified after the Pahalgam attack on April 22, 2025. Ms. Banerjee alleges that the intensity of it is felt most in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled States. The Delhi Police has checked documents of over 16,000 Bengali-speakers over the past few months. The Haryana government had set up detention centres in July where they allegedly held people. In Gujarat, over 1,000 were detained in Ahmedabad and Surat. Through June and July, migrant workers have been leaving jobs in other States to return to West Bengal. Almost a month after the incident, Mr. Mondal is back home. He wears the same shirt in which he was seen in the video, and is struggling to find work in his village. 'The contractor (in Mumbai) is calling me regularly, but I have no documents; they were all taken by the police. Here, even if I get work, I don't get even ₹500 a day,' the migrant worker says. The village, located along one of the distributaries of the Ganga, has a standing crop of jute in July, rising to almost five feet. The roads are filled with potholes so deep that ducks swim in them. Most men in the village migrate out of West Bengal for work, though there is no reliable data on how many do. Going back to work Less than a kilometre from his house, is a locality where other migrant workers have been forced to return from their place of work. They were detained for three days in the neighbouring state of Odisha. They were part of a group of about 400 who were detained by the Jharsuguda police in Odisha during the second week of July. On July 9, 2025, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the ruling party in West Bengal, posted a 55-second video of the workers on social media. In the video, Samiul Ansari (31) is describing how they were picked up in the dead of night. At their village in Murshidabad, Mr. Samiul Ansari is joined by four others: Yeasmin Ali Ansari (50), Manaruzzaman Ansari (41), Newton Ansari (33), and Amanat Ansari (31). They sit in a circle and narrate their ordeal during detention for 72 hours. By Indian law, police can detain a person for no longer than 24 hours, before which they must be produced before a magistrate. 'The police did not beat us at the detention centre, but kept saying that they had orders from above to detain us,' Mr. Samiul Ansari says. The men, who were detained in Jagatsinghpur district in Odisha, say they have been going to the State for a decade to work; this was the first time they had faced trouble. Odisha's government is run by the BJP that came to power last year. 'There is no work here. Maybe we won't go to where the police had detained us,' they say. The three younger men in the group went back to Odisha 11 days later. Their greatest fear is what identity documents they should carry so that the police does not detain them. In the village, Razzak Sheikh, the father of two migrant workers, has filed a habeas corpus petition before the Calcutta High Court, when his sons were detained elsewhere in Odisha. 'I got a call from the police there, who threatened to push my sons into Bangladesh if we failed to produce birth certificates.' Having an Indian birth certificate is, however, no guarantee say migrant workers, that they will not be harassed. Amir Sheikh, 19, from Malda's Kaliachak area, who was allegedly jailed in Rajasthan for a week before being pushed into Bangladesh in May 2025, had one, say his parents. Up to 1,000 people were identified as suspected Bangladeshi nationals, detained, and sent to six detention centres, in the State. The parents have produced their passports too, but say their son is still stuck in Bangladesh. On August 7, 2025, the father filed a habeas corpus before the Calcutta High Court. On July 30, 2025, the Maharashtra government claimed that 42,000 'fake' birth certificates issued to 'Bangladeshis' had been cancelled, and the number to be further cancelled by August 15 would be far higher. Politics at play In the first week of May 2025, weeks before these stories of migrants alleging detention and pushing into Bangladesh surfaced, TMC Rajya Sabha MP Samirul Islam wrote a letter to Mr. Shah. In it he claimed there was a 'disturbing pattern of targeted hostility' against Bengali workers in BJP-ruled States such as Gujarat. Mr. Islam is the chairperson of West Bengal Migrant Welfare Board. By the second week of July, reports of migrant workers in different parts of India began surfacing almost daily in West Bengal. On July 16, 2025, Ms. Banerjee hit the streets in Kolkata and warned that protests would rage across the country if Bengali migrants continue to be harassed. Two days later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while speaking at a public meeting in Durgapur in the southern part of West Bengal and one of India's main steel-producing centres, said that 'Bengali asmita' (identity and culture) was paramount to the BJP, but emphasised that 'whoever has infiltrated into the country will be dealt with as per law'. On July 21, 2025, Ms. Banerjee addressed her party's annual Martyrs' Day rally. This is a commemoration of the day 13 people were killed in 1993, when police fired on the Youth Congress, then led by Ms. Banerjee. Before lakhs of supporters in Kolkata she claimed that the BJP government at the Centre 'was unleashing terror on the Bengali language' and announced that a 'language movement' would continue until the Assembly polls, due in 2026. From the stage of the mega Trinamool event, the party chairperson read excerpts from what she called a secret notification issued by the Union Government in May 2025, and sent only to BJP-ruled States, which stated that if someone was suspected of being Bangladeshi, they should be detained for a month and sent to detention or holding camps. Amidst thousands of migrants returning and the disruption of work, the debate on Bengali language and identity continues to rage. On August 3, 2025, the Delhi Police issued a letter referring to the Bengali language as Bangladeshi, which the Trinamool took up as an insult to the 'Bengali-speaking people of India'. The very next day, while justifying the action of Delhi Police, BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya said, 'There is, in fact, no language called Bengali.' The West Bengal BJP leadership said that the drive is to identify Bangladeshi infiltrators and not migrants of the State. Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari and newly appointed State BJP president Samik Bhattacharya speak of 'sanitising the voter list and removing lakhs of Bangladeshi voters'. They insist on a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter list on the lines of what is happening in Bihar. Economically speaking The flight of industries and unemployment remain major challenges in West Bengal. The National Statistical Office's (NSO) Annual Survey on Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) made public in 2024 pointed out that West Bengal lost 3 million jobs in unincorporated enterprises from 2015-16 to 2022-23. In 2024, the Union Finance Minister had said that the share of industrial production in West Bengal had declined from 24% at the time of independence to 3.5% in 2021. Economist Abhirup Sarkar, the chairperson of the West Bengal Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation, says, 'There are historical reasons behind the decline of industries in West Bengal. One of the biggest factors is that Kolkata was dominated by British companies, which left after independence. Then, during the Left regime, militant trade unions and strikes played a role in the flight of capital.' He adds that productivity is low in West Bengal, but there is also a perception battle about the State. More than a shared border West Bengal shares a 2,216-km border with Bangladesh, and about 450 km of the border remains unfenced, making it porous in parts. Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said this is largely because the West Bengal government is not providing land to do so. However, there are cultural, historical, and geographic ties between the Bengalis on both sides of the border. The partition of Bengal took place on Rakshabandhan day in 1905, when the then Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, divided the Bengal Presidency into west (predominantly Hindu, including Bihar and Orissa) and east (predominantly Muslim, including Assam). This was annulled in 1911, when the capital was moved to Delhi. However, there was further turmoil in 1947, when East Pakistan was formed, and people moved across the newly-formed border, on the basis of religion. In 1971, when Bangladesh was formed, another wave of people came to India. Ten years ago, in 2015, a Land Border Agreement was signed between the two countries, where land parcels were exchanged, because there was Indian territory deep within Bangladesh and vice versa. People in these parcels were given the choice to become Bangladeshi nationals or Indian citizens. Shamshul Haque and Rabiul Haque chose India, and migrated to Gurugram, in Haryana, to work. They were arrested on suspicion of being Bangladeshi nationals. 'We chose to come to India leaving our place of birth behind because we always thought of ourselves as Indians. I had never thought, even in my dreams, that I would be held on suspicion of being Bangladeshi,' Shamshul says, showing a citizenship certificate issued by West Bengal's Cooch Behar district administration. While the majority of migrant workers detained or pushed into Bangladesh are Muslims, there are some from the Matua community, a sect of Hindu Namashudras, Dalits who migrated from Bangladesh, who are also facing detention. In Nadia district, two migrant workers from a Matua family, who had openly announced their allegiance to the BJP, were arrested by the Maharashtra police several months ago. Manishankar Biswas (23) and Nirmal Biswas (22) had left their home to work as carpenters in Akola district.Their father, Nishikanta, is an agricultural labourer. He and his wife, Pushpa, do not have the money to travel to Maharashtra. They live in a house put together with tin sheets. 'We have had several cases of people of the Matua community being held by the police in Maharashtra. When the police pick up people on the basis of language, both Hindus and Muslims will be arrested,' says Nikhilesh Adhikari, a Nagpur-based lawyer who is trying to arrange bail for the two men. On June 28, 2025, Ms. Banerjee urged migrant workers to return to West Bengal and assured them of work. Just a little over a month on, there are serpentine queues of migrant labourers at Howrah Station, booking tickets to leave again. Rakesh Alam, 27, is boarding the Howrah Ahmedabad Superfast Express, leaving his four-month-old daughter behind. He says, 'I cannot stay in Bengal when I have a family to feed.' shivsahay.s@ Edited by Sunalini Mathew
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
To counter Congress' accusations, BJP cites fake voters in Siddaramaiah's Varuna constituency
Bengaluru: Karnataka BJP hit back at Lok Sabha opposition leader Rahul Gandhi Friday, insisting irregularities in electoral rolls were rampant even in assembly segments won by senior Congress functionaries including Varuna, the constituency represented by chief minister Siddaramaiah. Aravind Limbavali, former Mahadevapura MLA, at a press conference, said: "We must thank Rahul Gandhi for raising this issue, as it has given us an opportunity to highlight irregularities involving Congress functionaries in adding fake voters to rolls. It includes Varuna constituency from where Siddaramaiah won in 2023." He shared some documents which he claimed was evidence but could not be independently verified. He went on to say: "They (Congress) are doing this (claiming vote fraud) to prevent the special intensive revision (SIR) in Bihar. Our demand is that SIR should not only continue in Bihar but should also be extended to Karnataka. The rule should not be different for Bihar and Karnataka." You Can Also Check: Bengaluru AQI | Weather in Bengaluru | Bank Holidays in Bengaluru | Public Holidays in Bengaluru Responding to Rahul's allegation of vote theft in Mahadevapura, Limbavali said house numbers were marked as "00" for several voters in Part No. 8 in Varuna rolls too. He also claimed irregularities in other constituencies which Congress won such as Chamarajpet (BZ Zameer Ahmed Khan), Sandur (E Annapoorna), Gandhinagar (Dinesh Gundu Rao), and BTM Layout (Ramalinga Reddy). "Interestingly, no such instances were found in Kanakapura represented by deputy CM DK Shivakumar," he said in response to a question. Limbavali, whose wife Manjula now represents Mahadevapura, dismissed Rahul's claims as baseless, saying: "These are claims by an immature politician. Former CM SM Krishna had once described Rahul's nature as mindful immaturity. The LoP in Lok Sabha has just exhibited his nature while alleging vote theft in Mahadevapura." He also contested Rahul's claim that BJP had led only in Mahadevapura in Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat. "In fact, we secured leads in four segments — Rajajinagar (39,429), Gandhinagar (23,324), CV Raman Nagar (20,114), and Mahadevapura (1,16,046)," Limbavali said. "The number of voters in Mahadevapura has increased from 2,75,328 in 2008 to 3,51,535. This is rapid growth, but it is natural growth, considering the predominant migrant population. " In Delhi, Union minister Pralhad Joshi accused Rahul of levelling allegations without "logic or basis". "When we lost elections in Maharashtra and they won, then everything was fine there... In 2023, they won in Karnataka, and in 2024, we won, so they are saying electoral rolls are incorrect... Is there any logic?" he asked. Stay updated with the latest local news from your city on Times of India (TOI). Check upcoming bank holidays , public holidays , and current gold rates and silver prices in your area. Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Raksha Bandhan wishes , messages and quotes !
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
DMK created thousands of fake voters: EPS
1 2 Virudhunagar: AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami on Friday launched a scathing attack on the DMK govt over alleged voter list manipulation, and said the Election Commission must act impartially. Speaking in Sattur in Virudhunagar district as part of his Makkalai Kaappom, Thamizhagathai Meetpom campaign, EPS took on minister Durai Murugan over his recent comment that EPS was silent on Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. "It's they (DMK) who have created thousands of fake voters. It was only after court intervened that 27,779 names were removed in R K Nagar, 12,085 in Perambur, and thousands more in constituencies like Thiru Nagar," he said. He also addressed the people in Virudhunagar, and Aruppukottai. Continuing his attack on the law and order situation, Palaniswami said six policemen were killed in the last six months. "If this is the state of police, what protection do ordinary citizens have," he said in Virudhunagar. He said crimes against women were also increasing. "In Tiruvallur alone, there were 11 cases of sexual assault in 20 days. Should this kind of governance continue," he said. He hit out at the govt for the delay in the Virudhunagar–Sattur–Aruppukottai combined drinking water scheme to draw water from the Thamirabarani river. Earlier, Palaniswami held consultations with industrial representatives from Sivakasi and surrounding areas at a hall in the town. Manufacturers from the fireworks, matchbox, printing, and calendar industries, members of Paper Merchants Association, and representatives from logistics firms attended. Industry leaders raised concerns over increasing regulations, rising input costs, and declining profit margins. EPS assured them that the AIADMK would remain a strong voice for industrial workers and owners. On the growing legal restrictions on traditional fireworks citing pollution concerns, Palaniswami expressed hope that Supreme Court 'takes a good decision on this matter.' Fireworks manufacturers requested him to facilitate more centralised certification of crackers and reduce delays caused by multiple agencies. "We are not against regulation, but we need a single-window clearance system," they said. Palaniswami assured them that the party would take up this issue in the assembly. Matchbox manufacturers urged him to advocate for a special subsidy package or a raw material bank for traditional industries. EPS promised to earmark a revival fund for small and medium manufacturing units when AIADMK comes into power. He also promised support for the calendar printing industry to take on the digital shift. EPS visited a fireworks unit and calendars manufacturing unit and interacted with the workers. Later in the evening, he addressed the public in Sattur, Virudhunagar, and Aruppukottai as part of his as part of his campaign. Stay updated with the latest local news from your city on Times of India (TOI). Check upcoming bank holidays , public holidays , and current gold rates and silver prices in your area. Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Raksha Bandhan wishes , messages and quotes !
