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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to Lok Sabha on motion of thanks to President started amid protest from Andhra Pradesh MPs of TDP and YSR congress.
The two parties were in the well of Lok Sabha all through the question hour, and Parliament Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar made a special request to them to go back to their seat so that the PM could speak.
It took 10 minutes for the Andhra MPs to decide on what to do and just as they started walking back to their chair, Congress rose to protest.
Jyotiraditya Scindia lead the charge questioning where the commitment of TDP to Andhra went?
Egged on by Sonia Gandhi, other MPs soon joined the chorus. TDP MP Tota Narsimha got into a verbal spat with Scindia. As the situation worsened, Ananth Kumar walked up to the warring MPs, held their hand in his effort to get them to their seats.
Finally, when the PM began to speak, the Congress MPs landed in the well of the House demanding better deal for Andhra Pradesh.
Whether the PM's attack on Congress was pre-planned or if he spoke impromptu is not known as Congress MPs kept disrupting his speech. But it was clear that Congress had come prepared with a strategy to disrupt. MPs from left parties and RJD soon joined them.
The camraderie in the opposition ranks was such that Adhir Ranjan chowdhary, an MP from Bengal, was heard leading with Malayalam slogans.
As the PM's speech went on for one and a half hours, the opposition strategy also changed. Rahul Gandhi instructed his MPs to change protest slogans to Rafale. He was seen handing over banners with slogans on Rafale to the protesting MPs.
CPM and Congress may have decided to not ally for 2019, but that didn't stop Mohammed Salim from displaying one of the Rafale banners handed to him by Rahul.
Not only was the Congress party president taking personal interest in the protests, he was also keen to see if Lok Sabha TV will telecast their protests. Rahul, Moily, Tharoor, Scindia all crowded near the TV screen inside the House to see if the camera caught their protest.
In all this, Asaduddin Owaisi was fact-checking PM. He shouted over the din to correct the PM that the Shimla pact was signed by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto not Benazir Bhutto.
Lok Sabha TV cameras avoided all of this, but in the process also lost out when the entire Treasury Benches stood up to congratulate the PM for his speech.
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