Sunny Deol, Shatrughan Sinha among 9 MPs who didn’t utter a word in 17th Lok Sabha

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, February 12

Actor-politicians Sunny Deol and Shatrugan Sinha were among nine Members of Parliament who did not speak at all during the entire tenure of the 17th Lok Sabha that adjourned sine die on February 10.

First-time MP Sunny Deol, who represents Gurdaspur, did make some written submissions during these five years though. Shatrughan Sinha did not do even that.

Six of them from ruling BJP

• BJP: 6 (Sunny Deol, Ramesh Chandappa Jigajinagi, BN Bachegowda, Pradhan Baruah, Anant Kumar Hegde, V Sreenivasa Prasad)
• TMC: 2 (Shatrughan Sinha, Dibyendu Adhikari)
• BSP: 1 (Atul Kumar Singh)

The first session of the 17th Lok Sabha commenced on June 17, 2019, after the General Election in May that year.

Lok Sabha records reveal that out of 543 MPs, only nine (six from the ruling BJP, two from the All India Trinamool Congress and one from the BSP) did not take part in any Lok Sabha debate or discussion on the floor of the House in five years.

These MPs are: BJP’s Ramesh Chandappa Jigajinagi (Bijapur SC, Karnataka); currently jailed BSP MP Atul Kumar Singh (Ghosi, UP); TMC’s Dibyendu Adhikari (Tamluk, West Bengal); BJP’s BN Bachegowda (Chikkaballapur, Karnataka); BJP’s Pradhan Baruah (Lakhimpur, Assam); BJP’s Sunny Deol (Gurdaspur, Punjab); BJP’s Anant Kumar Hegde (Uttara Kannada, Karnataka), BJP’s V Sreenivasa Prasad (Chamarajanagar SC, Karnataka) and TMC’s Shatrughan Sinha (Asansol, West Bengal).

Sinha was elected to the Lok Sabha on April 16, 2022, in a bypoll. Deol had zero verbal references to his name. He did not take part in question hour/zero hour proceedings or debates on the floor of Lok Sabha.

Speaker Om Birla, as a policy, called all first-time MPs to make maiden speeches in the Lower House.

Sources told The Tribune today, “Speaker Birla called Sunny Deol twice and nudged him to speak in the House in whatever form he liked. But there was no success.”

Sources also said that out of the above nine MPs, six, including Sunny Deol, did make a few written submissions for zero hour matters, starred and unstarred questions, though they did not speak. The remaining three (Shatrughan Sinha, Atul Singh and Ramesh Chandappa) had no participation in the 17th Lok Sabha in written or oral forms.