India’s lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, witnessed a shocking disruption of proceedings today, when two people jumped into the well of the House from the public gallery, shouting slogans and spraying smoke from canisters.
According to Delhi police, six people were involved. While four have been detained so far, a hunt is on for two others.
The serious security breach happened on a day when security in and around the parliament building and in the capital, New Delhi, was particularly tight.
Today is the 22nd anniversary of the deadly terror attack on India’s Parliament, then housed in a different building, which resulted in the death of 14 people, including the five attackers, eight security personnel, and a gardener. That attack, which was carried out by Pakistan-based terror groups Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba, almost brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.
Security in Parliament had been tightened today for another reason as well. Only a week ago, the U.S.-based Khalistani separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who is listed as a terrorist in India, released a video in which he threatened to take action that would “shake the very foundations of [the Indian] Parliament” on or before December 13. This he said was in response to “India’s foiled assassination” attempt against him.
Preliminary investigations into today’s intrusion into India’s parliament building are yet to reveal a link with Pannun.
According to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, the preliminary investigation indicates that the smoke sprayed into the house was “ordinary and aimed at creating sensationalism.”
Today’s incident happened in the new, high-security parliament building that Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated in May. Parliament’s winter session is in progress. However, the prime minister was not in the building when the intrusion happened.
Footage from the Lok Sabha’s closed-circuit television camera shows one of the two intruders leaping over the benches while the other sprayed colored gas/smoke.
While their motive is not clear yet, Indian Express reported that members of Parliament who were present inside the House when the incident happened told its reporters that the two men shouted “tana shahi nahi chalegi” (dictatorship won’t be accepted). They were overpowered and taken away by security staff.
Gaining entry to Parliament and obtaining a pass to attend parliamentary proceedings is not easy. Visitors have to clear five levels of security to enter the complex and the signature of an MP is needed to secure a pass for entry to the visitors’ gallery.
The two intruders are said to have received their passes from the office of Bharatiya Janata Party parliamentarian, Pratap Simha. A two-time BJP MP, Simha represents Mysore constituency in Karnataka.
Meanwhile, outside the parliament complex, Delhi Police detained two other people — a man and a woman— identified as Amol Shinde and Neelam Devi for setting off canisters of colored smoke and shouting slogans.
Back in 2001, India’s then-Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani described the attack on Parliament as the “most audacious, and also the most alarming act of terrorism in the nearly two-decades-long history of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in India.”
The intrusion by two men into India’s Parliament today did not result in loss of lives or bloodshed. But it was no less audacious and alarming. Security at Parliament was unprecedented today. Unlike in 2001, the government was on high alert. That two unarmed men could enter the well of the House with canisters lays bare gaping holes in security.