File image of former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda | Photo credit: The Hindu
Former Prime Minister and Janata Dal (Secular) leader HD Deve Gowda has written to Congress Parliamentary Party President Sonia Gandhi expressing concern over the “chaos” in and around Parliament and raising questions about the Leader of the Opposition’s conduct in leading protests that disrupted proceedings during the ongoing budget session.
In a letter dated March 16, Mr Deve Gowda said he was “very disturbed by some of the chaos that has been mindlessly introduced inside Parliament and in its larger premises, mainly by the opposition parties”.
Recalling his long political career, Mr. Deve Gowda said that he spent nearly 65 years as a legislator and MP, nearly 90% of which were on the opposition benches. “You yourself spent many years in the opposition and behaved there with grace and maturity. As this may be the last parliamentary meeting in my life, I feel compelled to say a few things with the hope that this will lead to a gradual restoration of parliamentary traditions and decency,” said the former prime minister.
“I strongly feel that the Congress MPs led by the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) have created too much disturbance inside Parliament and its premises,” he said, referring to slogan-shouting, placarding and protests inside and outside the House, without naming the Leader of the Opposition.
The veteran leader said such actions created a “frivolous attitude” that “assaulted my very idea and construct of parliament and parliamentary democracy”.
“In my long tenure, I have never witnessed Parliament in such chaos and casualness as we have seen recently,” Mr. Deve Gowda wrote, adding that even under “extreme provocation” he had never entered the Well of the House either in the State Legislature or in Parliament to protest.
Acknowledging that the opposition’s role was to highlight the government’s shortcomings, Mr Deve Gowda said this had to be done using “well-established and time-tested methods”.
“Though they protested, they did not block the entrance of Parliament to make their rally look like a tea house rally and worse, they ordered tea, biscuits and pakodas sitting on the steps of Parliament,” he wrote.
“The opposition must protest all it wants, but that protest must be worded in a way that does not dismantle what we have built together in more than 75 glorious years,” Mr Deve Gowda added, urging Mrs Gandhi to intervene.
Published – 16 March 2026 21:37 IST
