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Parliament
Spotlight
New Delhi, 6 April
2018
No Salary: NDA MPs Holier Than Thou?
New Delhi, 5 April
(INFA): Holier than thou should be the new bout of round between Parliament’s Treasury
and Opposition benches! With both the Houses, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha paralysed
for three weeks in the second session of Budget, the ruling NDA has taken the
fight to a moral high ground. On Thursday, Parliamentary Affairs Minister
Ananth Kumar announced that the ruling BJP and NDA MPs have decided not to take
salaries for the 23 days as Parliament was not allowed to function by the
Congress!
“This money
(salaries) is nation’s money, it is given to serve the people and if we are
unable to do so, we have no right to take the people’s money,” he was heard
saying amidst the din in the Lok Sabha. The Congress, he added was unable to accept
the mandate given by the people to the Modi government and that is why it was
stalling both Houses from functioning...they are engaging in anti-democratic
politics...they won’t let business to run and will stall the house and will
take their salaries ...the whole nation is watching..”
Obviously, the blame
game is getting murkier and sharper. The BJP trying to pin the blame on the
Congress has raised many an eyebrow. Opposition members are both intrigued and
amused as they see the AIADMK, friendly to the BJP, which has been coming into
the well of the House and disrupting the proceedings. Most other MPs have been
now seen standing around their seats and seeking to be heard in the din. Last
week both the TRS and TDP MPs refrained from walking into the well as they
decided that better political sense is to allow the no-confidence motion to be
taken up.
However, the
situation didn’t change. Like the previous days, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan simply
put up her hands. She said, as is now quite familiar that “as the House was not
in order” she could not take up the motion. Earlier Kumar drew her attention
saying the ‘House began on the 5th and till 27th the
Congress had not moved a No-confidence Motion’, hitting out at Congress leader Mallikarjun
Kharge who demanded from Speaker that as per the rules the motion must be
accepted and it had the requisite 50 members endorsing it.
In the Rajya Sabha
too, an exasperated Chairman Venkaiah Naidu adjourned the House after AIADMK
MPs refused to go back to their seats. The House was unable to pass the
amendments to the anti-corruption law. But Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi
Azad made his point saying “While we are responsible for the passage of the
Bills, at the same time, we are also responsible -- and, we have been mandated
so -- to raise the issues that are concerning the millions and millions of
people of India.”
With just one more
day left for the Budget session, nothing will change. It is now for the
million’s of these people to make whatever they can from this melee and find a
platform to raise their issues.---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
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