Senior Congress politician Shashi Tharoor will not host the chat show ‘To The Point’ on Sansad TV in protest of the protracted suspension of 12 Rajya Sabha members.
Sansad TV was recently formed by merging Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TV. Many MPs were recruited to present programmes as part of the overhaul. Tharoor is the second member of Parliament to do so. Priyanka Chaturvedi, a Shiv Sena MP, too backed out of her agreement on December 5. She is one of the 12 members of Parliament who have been suspended for the duration of the current session.
Tharoor said that the extended suspension of MPs ejected arbitrarily for actions done during the previous session had thrown into doubt the entire assumption of a nonpartisan spirit motivating Parliament’s work.
‘I am concerned that my continued involvement in hosting a show on Sansad TV would be seen as making complicit in the undemocratic manner in which parliamentary institutions are being run’, he said.
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Tharoor added that Sansad TV was contributing to the situation by focusing solely on members of the Treasury benches while neglecting the Opposition. ‘A parliamentary TV channel must, by definition, reflect the diversity of Parliament and not just whitewash the reality of Parliament’s current functioning’, he said.
Tharoor also announced that he would stop hosting the show unless the members’ suspensions were lifted and a semblance of bipartisanship was restored to the Parliament’s proceedings and the operation of Sansad TV.
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