London: Over two and a half million (25 lakh) Britons have signed a petition calling on the British Parliament to hold a new referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union (EU).
The petition had 2,776,846 signatures at the time this copy was written. The number is growing rapidly with over 100 signatures being added every minute. On Friday, the website of the House of Commons collapsed for sometime because of the high numbers of people who visited the website.
The petition, set up by William Oliver Healey, called for implementing the rule that "if the Remain or Leave vote is less than 60 per cent based on a turnout less than 75 per cent, there should be another referendum".
However, political experts say that a second vote would be out of question as there is no such rule or existing convention.
Parliament released a message on its official website that it will consider the request for a discussion, as parliament is committed to consider any request or initiative with more than 100,000 signatures.
The committee concerned with petitions will meet on Tuesday to decide whether to approve a debate in this regard.
A total of 51.9 per cent of Britons voted on Thursday to leave the EU in a referendum, nicknamed "Brexit" with the participation of 72.1 per cent of voters.
After the voting, EU and UK are at loggerheads over the timeframe of divorce. The EU wants a quickie divorce, but Britain wants time to think things over.
Senior EU politicians on Saturday demanded that the UK quickly cut its ties with the 28-nation bloc — a process Britain says won't begin for several months — as the political and economic shockwaves from the U.K.'s vote to leave reverberated around the world.
"There is a certain urgency ... so that we don't have a period of uncertainty, with financial consequences, political consequences," French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said at a meeting in Berlin of the EU's six founding nations.
EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker warned that the split was "not an amicable divorce" but noted it was never "a tight love affair anyway."
