The AAP on Wednesday termed the allegations against its Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha as “baseless” and accused the BJP of unleashing a campaign against him to tarnish his reputation as a parliamentarian.
The party said that it is yet to receive any such notice from the Privileges Committee. Whenever a notice comes, it will be answered effectively and in detail.
However, it is necessary to clarify that as per parliamentary rules and procedure, no signature or written consent is required before the names of the members are proposed to the Selection Committee.
Since it neither requires a signature, the question of misinterpretation of signatures does not arise.
It is merely a proposition of acceptance or rejection of names. Select committees are non-partisan committees, consisting of members from all major parties, hence the names were proposed from the board.
The reference to the names given by the AAP MP to the Select Committee was merely a proposal, to be accepted or rejected by the House. In this case, the House rejected the reference. Therefore, the question of including the names of the said complainants does not arise.
The rules clearly state that members can be withdrawn if they do not intend to be part of the committee.
It is also a fact that nowhere in the parliamentary bulletin issued referring the matter to the Committee of Privileges, there is any mention of the word forgery/forgery/mark/signature.
The party’s reaction came after Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar referred complaints of four MPs, who accused Chadha of proposing their name for constitution of a select committee without their consent in violation of rules, to the privileges committee to examine and investigate the matter.
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