Speaker Om Birla objected to Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury's comments, alleging "subversion of convention," and questioned him as to whether he was "challenging" the Speaker, whose job it is to choose who chairs the committees. This escalated the dispute between the government and opposition parties over the distribution of the chairmanship of parliamentary standing committees.
Chowdhury accused the government of "subverting" parliamentary traditions by denying opposition parties the opportunity to chair committees in a zero hour intervention.
“For years, the opposition is protected in the House through conventions and precedents. You have ended these conventions and snatched away (the post of) chairman of all parliamentary panels from opposition parties. Yet, we hear of ‘One Nation, One Direction and One Family’. We lost the chairmanship of the IT committee, Sudeep (Bandopadhyay) also lost his chairmanship,” Chowdhury said.
