A man jumped into the lawmakers’ area of India’s parliament, shouted slogans and set off a smoke can on Wednesday, in a major security breach on the 22nd anniversary of a deadly attack on the complex.
The parliament TV channel showed a young man wearing a black jacket and dark trousers jump from the visitors’ gallery into the lawmakers’ seating area in the lower house while a member was speaking, climbing over tables and entering the aisles.
He was surrounded by security staff and lawmakers and caught in an aisle as he set off a smoke can in his shoes, releasing dense white and yellow smoke, lawmakers said.
Four people, including the man, had been arrested, authorities said.
“It all happened in half a minute or one minute,” Rajendra Agarwal, a lawmaker from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party who was presiding over the house, told CNN News 18 TV channel, adding he saw a second person in the visitors’ gallery also trying to jump into the lawmakers’ area.
“There is no doubt it was a major security lapse.”
Lawmakers said that the intruder shouted slogans they could not make out and there was a sound and some smoke.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not in parliament at the time.
Parliament Winter Session : Before the commencement of proceedings in Parliament on Wednesday, the eighth day of the ongoing winter session, MPs paid tributes to the martyrs of the December 13, 2001 Parliament attacks.
Inside the two houses, however, proceedings are once again likely to be stormy, with the treasury and opposition benches set to collide over a host of legislations to be moved by the government; one such legislation was the bill to regulate appointment and service terms of the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners of India, which got passed in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday despite fierce protests by the opposition, which argued that the bill aims to circumvent a Supreme Court verdict from earlier this year regarding appointments of the officers to oversee elections in the country.
Rejecting the allegations, however, Union law minister Arjun Meghwal stressed that the new legislation was brought as the 1991 Act had certain ‘weaknesses.’
The winter session began on December 4 and is scheduled to conclude on December 22 if not adjourned sine die. The ongoing session is also the penultimate Parliament session of the Narendra Modi’s government in its second term.
