Rajya Sabha Chairman C.P. Radhakrishnan meets floor leaders, seeks cooperation

The Vice-President of India and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha C.P. Radhakrishnan at his first meeting with the floor leaders of the Upper House on Tuesday (October 7, 2025) evening urged cooperation from all sides. No situation should be created that would lead to the suspension of members, Mr. Radhakrishnan said. 

Invoking the parliamentary tradition of not interrupting the members’ maiden speeches, he said that the winter session of Parliament, which begins in mid-November, would be his maiden session as Chairman, and he hoped that the tradition would be extended to him, too, allowing for a session free of disruption. 

In the two-hour long meeting, Mr. Radhakrishnan urged members to utilise all available parliamentary procedures, from Zero Hour, during which members can raise any issue of national importance, to the Question Hour.  

The Opposition parties voiced their concern over the shrinking time available for them in the parliamentary schedule, and the inflexibility of the government. The Congress’s Pramod Tiwari pointed out that the relations between the Treasury and Opposition benches had deteriorated to such an extent that no farewell had been arranged for former Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar.  

Nearly all Opposition floor leaders urged Mr. Radhakrishnan to ensure that debates on issues proposed by the Opposition, under various rules, should be permitted.

In the past eight years, no debate under Rule 267, which requires the suspension of the day’s business to discuss the issue at hand, had been taken up, the Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha Sagarika Ghose said at the meeting.

In the British Parliament, at least 20% of the time is reserved for the Opposition’s business, but there is no similar provision here, senior Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader John Brittas said. Several parliamentary questions had been disallowed, even when the information was publicly available, he added, citing the example of questions filed by him seeking data on oil imported by India.

Some members pointed out that protests by the Opposition had been deliberately blacked out by Sansad TV. To avoid showing the Opposition members, the Sansad TV cameras remained focused on the Treasury benches, which the members said was a form of censorship.