Representative not lord and master parliament should act against violent mp

Representative not lord and master parliament should act against violent mp

Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad is a disgrace to the august House of the People and to the state of Maharashtra, from where people have elected him to articulate their right as citizens to have a say in how the country should be run. The MP beat up an Air India staffer and boasted about it later. The MP was angry that he had to fly cattle class, although he had a business class ticket with him. That the flight he boarded was an all-economy flight was a minor detail that the MP chose to ignore while venting his anger at being forced to travel like an ordinary, unimportant person on a member of the Air India ground staff who was only trying to ask him to come off his high horse, after the MP refused to get off the plane after it landed in Delhi and all other passengers had disembarked. Parliament should take stern action against such atrocious behaviour by one of its members.
The airline and the assaulted staffer have filed separate complaints with the police. The police might or might not act, depending on how they interpret the signal from the powers that be. But Parliament should not abdicate its responsibility to uphold standards of decency and the essential spirit of democracy. Elected members fly around the country to serve the people, not to rule over them and behave like feudal lords. This must be made very clear to Gaikwad and all would-be Gaikwads among MPs. For Gaikwad, this is a repeat offence of sorts. He had made news once earlier for stuffing a roti into a canteen boy’s mouth for daring to serve him non-Maharashtrian food. MPs looked the other way on that occasion. It is time to act now. And they should not be surprised if he does not quite turn the other cheek.
People must protest in his constituency as well. MPs have to be disabused of the notion that they can be, once elected, a law unto themselves, and are not answerable to anyone. People have to assert their status as the sovereign in a democracy. Those whom they elect to office have the delegated authority to run the affairs of the nation on behalf of the people. They are not modern versions of the rulers of old, with untrammelled power.