Lok Sabha adjourned as opposition stalls proceedings

In an ominous start to the winter session of parliament, the Lok Sabha was adjourned on the opening day on Tuesday, with angry opposition members demanding the resignation of home minister P Chidambaram for his alleged role in the 2G telecom scam.

Speaker Meira Kumar, who adjourned the lower house of parliament initially till noon, later decided to adjourn the house for the rest of the day as opposition members did not allow the house to function.

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led opposition has warned it will boycott Chidambaram – who was the finance minister when the scam unfolded – and will not allow him to speak in parliament. The party took the decision at a meeting at the residence of Lal Krishna Advani, the senior BJP leader.

S S Ahluwalia, the party's deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha, told reporters that Chidambaram was as much to be blamed as former telecommunications minister and DMK leader A Raja, who is in jail in connection with the scam. ''We will not allow Chidambaram to speak till he resigns,'' said Ahluwalia.

Law minister Salman Khurshid described the BJP move as ''uncharitable and unkind.'' Earlier, prime minister Manmohan Singh had appealed to the opposition to cooperate with the government in passing some ''very important'' bills during the crucial winter session.

''I sincerely hope that all political parties will realise that we have some very important pieces of legislation which are going to be presented in this session and our country's sustained development and prosperity demands that many of those bills should be converted as acts of parliament,'' he said before the start of the session. ''As far as the boycott is concerned, I sincerely hope that the political parties will resist any such temptation. There is virtually no case for a boycott.''