The confrontation over the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, which criminalizes instant triple talaq, sustained in Rajya Sabha. On Thursday as the Opposition demanded that before any other legislative operations, the House first wanted a modification for referring the bill to a select committee. The previous day, Rajya Sabha had been strained to adjourn after Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad asked the chair to go for voting on the demand for a recommendation.

Derek O’Brien (Trinamool) and Naresh Agrawal (SP) asked for deputy chairman P J Kurien to begin Thursday’s legislative operations from where the House had adjourned Wednesday. “I also want to point out that many of those who disrupted [Rajya Sabha] yesterday are not even members of this House and are here by virtue of being ministers,” quoted Agrawal.

A decision was put on clanged to for almost three hours, as both the government and the Opposition settled to have a short-duration debate on the state of the economy first. Once the debate was ended and it was time to take up legislative operations, Azad demanded to vote on the modification of select committee referral.