NEW DELHI: The Lok Sabha on Thursday suspended seven Congress members for the remaining period of the Budget Session over misconduct and "utter disregard" for House rules after they snatched papers from the Speaker's table.

The lower house has witnessed suspension of members for unruly behaviour on many occasions in the past.

Incidents such as hurling of papers or spraying the chamber with pepper are some of the offences that invited suspension over the last few years.

It was in the last Lok Sabha that Speaker Sumitra Mahajan had suspended as many as 45 members for creating ruckus in the House.

First, it was a batch of 24 AIADMK MPs who were handed suspensions followed by a second batch of 21 members, including MPs from AIADMK, TDP and an unattached YSRCP member under Rule 374 A of Lok Sabha which bars the members from attending the House for the rest of the session.

While AIADMK members were protesting against a proposed dam over the Cauvery river, the Andhra parties were demanding special status for their state.

In the 15th Lok Sabha, it was Speaker Meira Kumar’s turn to crack the whip when she suspended 18 members from Andhra Pradesh for the remaining days of the budget session, on February 12, 2014, for creating an unprecedented situation that led to extreme pandemonium over the demand for a separate Telengana state.

Kumar took the decision in the wake of ruckus created by pepper spraying and fisticuffs among members opposing and supporting Telangana in the chamber. She too used Rule 374 A, where a member can "be suspended from the service of the House for a period not exceeding the remainder of the session" for disregarding "the authority of the Chair or abusing the rules of the House by persistently and wilfully obstructing business."

In the 14th Lok Sabha, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee had stopped short of suspending Mamata Banerjee , then a TMC MP, in August, 2005, when she had thrown a sheaf of papers at the Speaker’s chair, occupied by the then deputy speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal. She then sent across her resignation to the deputy Speaker and walked out.

Chatterjee later turned down the resignation. Atwal had informed Banerjee that the Speaker had disallowed her notice to raise the subject of illegal Bangladeshi migration, that provoked her unruly act.

