Six members of the Trinamul Congress have been suspended from the Rajya Sabha for a day for holding up placards in the House and demanding a discussion on the Pegasus snooping allegations.

Wednesday’s suspension, however, did not deter the rest of the Opposition from returning to the Upper House with placards when the proceedings resumed in the afternoon.

The six MPs who were suspended under Rule 255 of the Rajya Sabha were Dola Sen, Md Nadimul Haque, Abir Ranjan Biswas, Shanta Chhetri, Arpita Ghosh and Mausam Noor.

Soon after ordering their suspension for repeatedly entering the Rajya Sabha with placards, Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu adjourned the House till 2pm.

While the six suspended Trinamul MPs were not allowed to return to the House when proceedings resumed, videos from the Rajya Sabha lobby showed them shouting slogans at the door to the chamber with the watch and ward staff surrounding them to prevent them from entering.

Inside, their colleagues in the Opposition picked up the cudgels for them and continued with the slogan shouting in an attempt to drown the discussion on the bills that were taken up in quick succession.

Since the television cameras always focus on the Chair or the designated speaker of the moment whenever there is pandemonium in the House, the Opposition members could be seen trying to use their placards to block off the MPs addressing the Rajya Sabha to get some airtime for their issues.

Many of the Opposition members had also got themselves listed to speak on the three bills the government had slated for the afternoon in the hope of using the opportunity to raise the farmers’ protests. However, deputy Chairman Harivansh refused to allow this, warning that nothing would go on record if they spoke on anything other than the bills under consideration.

When CPM member John Brittas stood up to say that he opposed the Limited Liability Partnership (Amendment) Bill, the Chair said: “Please speak on the subject, only then it will go on record.”

CPM leader Elamaram Kareem later told The Telegraph that this was undemocratic. “We are well within our rights to oppose any bill as per our party line. Why should the Chair be interrupting a member just because he said ‘Sir, I stand to oppose the bill’. Why was the member interrupted even before he had said anything unrelated to the bill? In any case, it is undemocratic to dictate to members how they shall speak on a bill.”

Member after member from the Opposition used the same strategy to draw attention to the farmers’ movement but they were cut short and nothing was included in the records.

Later, when finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman tried to find fault with the Opposition’s actions during her reply to the discussion on a bill, the DMK’s Tiruchi Siva objected, saying that after dictating to MPs that they should not speak beyond the bill under consideration, the minister was levelling accusations against them beyond the matter at hand.