NEW DELHI: The first day of Parliament Winter Session 2025 witnessed a Mallikarjun Kharge vs JP Nadda showdown in the Rajya Sabha over the leader of opposition’s reference to “sudden exit” of former Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar.The sharpest moment came when leader of the House JP Nadda advised Kharge to “visit a doctor” to deal with their political frustrations, insisting the House stay focused on the agenda at hand.
The leader of opposition in the Upper House, during his welcome address to the Rajya Sabha chairman CP Radhakrishnan, brought up his predecessor’s “completely unexpected and sudden exit from the office of the Chairman, Rajya Sabha.”“I hope you will not mind that I am constrained to refer to your predecessor’s completely unexpected and sudden exit from the office of the Chairman, Rajya Sabha,” he said amid opposition from the BJP members.“The chairman, being custodian of the entire house, belongs as much to the opposition as to the government. I was disheartened that the house did not get an opportunity to bid him a farewell. Regardless, wish him, on behalf of the entire opposition, a very healthy life,” Kharge said.The statement did not go down well with the leader of house JP Nadda who called the remarks “irrelevant”.“We must maintain the dignity of the felicitation program, and it would be good if we discuss it accordingly. If we start discussing the issue that our Leader of the Opposition brought up today, the farewell, and all the other topics, I think it’s irrelevant,” he said.“There will also be discussions from here that you moved a no-confidence motion against him, not once but twice…I think our Leader of the Opposition is very respectable. The defeat in Bihar, Haryana, and Maharashtra has caused you considerable pain. But you should express your pain and suffering to a doctor. You should speak to a doctor when the time comes,” he added.Earlier this year, Dhankhar’s abrupt resignation as Vice President, officially citing health reasons with two years still left in his term, had triggered a flurry of speculation and conspiracy theories across political circles. His decision, announced on the very first day of Parliament’s Monsoon Session, was highly unusual—making him only the third Vice President after VV Giri and R Venkataraman to step down before completing a full tenure.
