Friday, March 24 2006 17:12 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Protesting the 'sudden' adjournment of Parliament sine die, CPI today (Mar 24 2006) accused the UPA government of scuttling parliamentary functioning and demanded that the House be reconvened immediately.

CPI leader in Lok Sabha, Gurudas Dasgupta, shot off a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saying "we protest against the action of the government that has led to doing away with the second spell of the Budget Session."

Maintaining that he and other members have been demanding that Parliament should meet for at least 100 days a year, he said "the statement of the Leader of the House (Pranab Mukherjee) that it had no business (and) therefore it was adjourned sine die, is totally untrue.

"It is an innocent way of defending an action that has no defence," Dasgupta said.

He said governments, one after the other, irrespective of party affiliations, "have been trying to scuttle the Parliament, dilute parliamentary functioning, the consequence of which is bound to be ominous."

On the office of profit issue, he said the Parliament should be called upon to deliberate on the matter and clinch it by adopting legislation. "No shortcut method should be taken to settle the controversy."