New Delhi, Feb 13 (PTI) The stormy first leg of the Budget session of Parliament that saw heated exchanges between the opposition and the treasury benches over the India-US interim trade deal and unpublished memoir of former Army chief M M Naravane concluded on Friday.

The Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha will both reassemble on March 9 and the session will conclude on April 2.

The first part of the session also saw the opposition give a notice to remove Speaker Om Birla from his chair after expressing no-confidence in him and accusing him of abusing his position.

This is the fourth such notice to remove the speaker so far, with the earlier ones either being defeated or not being taken up due to lack of numbers. The notice would now be taken up during the second part of the session.

Meanwhile, the speaker also said that he will not occupy the chair on moral grounds until the notice for his removal is disposed of.

The three-week recess period will allow the standing committees of Parliament to examine allocations made in the Union Budget to various central ministries.

While the Lok Sabha saw lower productivity, that of the Rajya Sabha was nearly 100 per cent, as members participated in the discussion on both the Motion of Thanks to the President's Address and the Union Budget.

The Lok Sabha witnessed acrimonious exchanges from both sides after Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi was not allowed to quote excerpts from Narawane's unpublished memoir. Its fallout was that the prime minister could not reply to the discussion on the Motion of Thanks.

The Lok Sabha witnessed dramatic scenes and repeated adjournments from February 2 afternoon after the chair disallowed Gandhi to quote excerpts from Naravane's unpublished memoir relating to the India-China conflict of 2020.

This led to the suspension of eight MPs, including seven of the Congress and one of the CPI(M), for the remainder of the Budget session for unruly behaviour.

The opposition finally moved a notice to move a resolution against Birla for removing him from his chair.

An anguished Birla said he had "concrete information" that many Congress members might move towards the PM's seat and carry out "some unexpected act" as a result of which he had requested him not to come to the House to reply to the discussion on the Motion of Thanks.

In an unprecedented development, the Lok Sabha passed the Motion of Thanks on February 5 without the prime minister's customary reply in the face of relentless sloganeering by opposition members.

In the Rajya Sabha, Prime Minister Modi, in his nearly 100-minute reply to the debate on the Motion of Thanks on February 5, took on the opposition and accused them of insulting not just a tribal woman President Droupadi Murmu but also the high office of the President of India as well as the Constitution. He said the opposition has no right to talk about the Constitution anymore.

He also launched a scathing attack on the Congress saying the opposition party is unable to digest its successive electoral defeats and his rise, and asserted that it will never be able to "dig his grave" as the blessings of crores of Indians are his "protective shield". He also accused the Congress' "first family" of "stealing" Mahatma Gandhi's surname, alleging that stealing was their ancestral profession.

The Motion of Thanks was adopted by the Rajya Sabha by a voice vote in the absence of opposition members, who staged a walkout.

Later, the discussion on the Union Budget took place and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman replied to the discussion in both Houses.

Participating in the debate in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi accused the government of failing to protect India's interests while signing an interim trade agreement with the United States, a charge that Sitharaman countered, saying it was the Congress government that sold the country at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

A Bill to amend the Industrial Relations Code aiming to bring legal clarity was passed by Parliament in the first part of the session.

In the Rajya Sabha, Sitharaman asserted that India is on a robust growth trajectory with low unemployment, dismissing concerns of "jobless growth" as a relic of the UPA era. She said the middle class is expanding, not being suppressed, and emphasised that higher taxes paid by individuals compared to corporates do not mean they are being burdened.

According to PRS Legislative, while the productivity of the Lok Sabha was only 43 per cent, that of the Rajya Sabha was 97 per cent. It also said that the Lok Sabha functioned for 26.6 hours while the Rajya Sabha functioned for 58.2 hours.

On Friday, Rajya Sabha proceedings were also adjourned at 1 pm after Zero Hour and Question Hour.

On Friday, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge raised the issue of large portions of his speech during the debate on Motion of Thanks being expunged and demanded that they be restored. He urged the chair to reconsider his decision, saying otherwise, he will release them to the public.

Chairman C P Radhakrishnan, however, said Kharge cannot question the chair, and what he was saying was not correct as whatever has been expunged from the records cannot be released outside.

The Lok Sabha saw adjournments before the House was adjourned till March 9. Earlier, the House was adjourned for one hour after opposition members raised slogans demanding the resignation of Union minister Hardeep Puri. The opposition members were also protesting against the India-US interim trade agreement. PTI SKC GJS NAB SKC KSS KSS