Chai pe charcha with suspended MPs

New Delhi: The sit-in protest by eight suspended MPs on the Parliament premises continued for the second day on Tuesday, with Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh Singh offering them tea in the morning. The suspended parliamentarians spent the night in the lawns near Mahatma Gandhi's statue. Aam Aadmi Party's Sanjay Singh posted a picture on Twitter from the protest site in the morning and said that the "whole night was spent under the open sky in front of Bapu's statue". The RS deputy chairman, the leaders said, came in bright and early with a posse of news cameras and was told by a senior MP to visit them without the cameras and sit with them.

"Another senior MP also told him that while bringing tea was a nice gesture, he was still in the wrong in what he did. He was told that he was the one who broke the rules," a protesting MP said.

The protesting MPs did not accept the tea and snacks offered by the deputy chairman.

Harivansh Singh has been in the thick of things since the suspension drama unfolded. The eight MPs were suspended for the remaining part of the current session over their "misbehaviour" with the deputy chairman during the passage of the farm Bills on Sunday. Rajya Sabha Chairman Venkaiah Naidu said Deputy Chairman Harivansh, an MP from Bihar, was physically threatened by Opposition MPs on Sunday.