Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) chief Sonia Gandhi on Thursday accused the government of bulldozing the waqf bill in the Lok Sabha while calling the proposed law a brazen assault on the Constitution and part of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s deliberate strategy to keep society in a state of permanent polarisation.
She hit out at the government, saying it was “dragging the country into an abyss where our Constitution will remain on paper”. Gandhi accused the ruling dispensation of steadfastly denying discussion on issues of public importance. “Gone are the days when the ruling party was accommodating of the Opposition, when debates and discussions used to take place in both Houses, and as MPs [members of Parliament] we looked forward to them,” she said in her address to the CPP.
Gandhi said leaders of the Opposition were not being allowed to speak in both Houses of Parliament. She called the trend of adjournments due to the treasury bench’s protests extraordinary and shocking.
Gandhi praised the Congress lawmakers for exposing the government’s claims and urged them to raise the failures and misgovernance in BJP-ruled states to counter allegations against Congress-governed states.
At the fag end of the longest House session of the year, Gandhi’s speech recapped the party’s performance in Parliament, attacked the BJP over fundamental issues and reminded the lawmakers to follow up on key pro-people topics.
“…whether it is education, civil rights and liberties, our federal structure, or conduct of elections, the Modi government is dragging the country into an abyss where our Constitution will remain on paper, and we know their intention is to demolish even that. It is vital for all of us to continue to fight for what is right and just, to expose the Modi government’s failing and intention to turn India into a surveillance state.”
She said the Prime Minister has rebranded, repackaged, and marketed initiatives taken during the Congress’s rule (2004-2014) as his accomplishments. “That too needs to be exposed through our own public outreach activities,” Gandhi said.Gandhi said they demanded a debate on issues of public importance, but unsurprisingly, the ruling party denied these too. “…we wanted a detailed discussion in the Lok Sabha on the working of the ministries of defence and external affairs. Both these subjects are of critical importance given the increasingly turbulent political atmosphere in our neighborhood, but this was disallowed,” she said.
“We have been asking for a discussion in both Houses on the grave challenges posed by China on our borders and the shocking clean chit given to it by the Prime Minister on June 19th, 2020. His statement adversely impacted our negotiating position, but that too was refused.”
Gandhi said imports from China are booming and destroying Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises that are the main job creators. “We have also repeatedly been raising the issue of free and fair elections and the need for Parliament to debate the functioning of the Election Commission and its opaque rules and procedures.”
She said some of these rules and procedures are under challenge in the Supreme Court. “Even a short-duration discussion on this subject was also not allowed.”
She called the One Nation, One Election Bill another subversion of the Constitution. “We strongly oppose this legislation as well. …our plea for the immediate implementation of the women’s reservation bill passed by both Houses two years back continues to be willfully ignored along with the other demand for one-third reservation for women belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBC [Other Backward Class] communities”.
She said transformative laws such as the Forest Rights Act and the Land Acquisition Act enacted during Manmohan Singh’s prime ministership were markedly getting diluted. “The National Food Security Act, 2013, has ensured food security for over 800 million Indians. But, another at least 140 million have been denied their legal entitlements due to the Modi government’s unprecedented failure to conduct the census that was due in 2021.”
