HOURS AFTER Prime Minister Narendra Modi singled out the Congress and attacked it while replying to the debate on the President’s Address in Lok Sabha, opposition parties on Monday said his speech was meant for a “maidan”, and argued it was unbecoming of a Prime Minister to have rendered such a “shallow” “political” speech on the President’s Address.
While Congress accused Modi of having indulged in “cheap politics”, leaders of many parties, including Trinamool Congress, DMK and BSP, said it was unfortunate that the Prime Minister did not answers to issues they had flagged, and questions they had asked —instead, they said, he focused all his attention on Congress.
“It was an election speech. The dignity associated with a PM’s address…he moved away from that and indulged in cheap politics,” Congress’s Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury told The Indian Express. “The Congress is more than a century old party and he is saying that this party is with the tukde-tukde gang. It showed his shallowness and parochial attitude. It was unbecoming…”
Arguing that the Opposition had raised several issues during the debate on the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address, he said, “We wanted him to reply on all those issues…that what is the government’s thinking on issues related to national security…Pegasus snooping row…rising unemployment, price rise, Covid-19, agriculture. These issues had come up during the debate. He should have spoken on that.”
“But, instead he gave a speech which is given at election rallies. He perhaps forgot that he was speaking in Lok Sabha. It was an election rally address. After all, he was replying to a debate on the President’s Address. He should have kept that in mind.”
TMC member Sougata Ray said, “The Prime Minister’s speech was not at all befitting a reply of a PM on a debate on the President’s Address.”
“He did not mention any of the points the Opposition had raised —unemployment, poverty, inflation, etc. He did not reply to any of those. It was a speech meant for the maidan…for a public meeting,” Ray told The Indian Express.
The Congress, he said, was “nowhere in President’s speech”, so why should the Prime Minister have gone on and on about the Congress? “He could have made a passing reference. It was not a very dignified speech, according to me. He refrained from even announcing any new programme. Whatever has been announced earlier (was repeated)…”
Senior DMK leader T R Baalu agreed: “There were a lot of paragraphs in the President’s speech on his government. At least he should have repeated that. He simply went on fighting with the Congress. What is the use? He quoted (Subramania) Bharathiyar’s poem…those poems recited during the freedom struggle are still remembered fondly. No problem. Let him recite those poems. But at the same time, his government had rejected Tamil Nadu’s Republic Day tableau, which had the statues of many freedom fighters. So he was shedding crocodile tears.”
“He did not respond to the speeches made by any of us. He only responded to Adhirji. I was the speaker after him (Adhir) during the debate. He did not answer to me. He did not answer to other parties. He replied to Congress only. It was very strange. Never in the history of Parliament, a Prime Minister replied in this fashion to a discussion on the motion of thanks to the President’s Address,” he added.
Calling it a “political speech”, BSP’s Kunwar Danish Ali said: “We all had raised many issues. I had, in fact, said two or three times that I hope the PM will reply to this, particularly about the Dharam Sansad issue and the hijab controversy. The Prime Minister tweets on small issues. (But) here the country’s secular fabric is at stake, and the PM is not taking any notice of it.”
He said the government is not taking Parliamentary proceedings seriously.
“The ministers don’t answer promptly…Instead of answering questions, they start praising the Prime Minister. And here was the Prime Minister’s speech. This is a very dangerous trend. Parliament is for debating and asking questions from the government which has to reply. They are skipping giving answers. Presidential address in one of the important occasions in the Parliament calendar where the country is told what the government is going to do in the next one year and what it has done in the past. In the prevailing situation, this is the only forum and debate in Parliament where we can raise all these issues,” he said.