Congress members on Monday forced a brief adjournment of the Rajya Sabha proceedings on allegations that the Gujarat police were abducting and threatening the party MLAs in the State in view of the coming election to the Upper House.
Madhusudan Mistry (Congress) raised the issue, alleging that the party MLAs were being abducted. It was alleged that the Congress MLAs were being offered money.
Chair’s view
However, disallowing Mr. Mistry’s notice under Rule 267, Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien said the same issue had been taken up for discussion last Friday.
Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi accused the Congress of holding hostage its own MLAs in a holiday resort in Karnataka even as the people in Gujarat were suffering from the floods.
The Minister said the government was ready for the discussion.
However, several Congress members gathered in the well of the House shouting slogans against what they termed “murder of democracy.” Some BJP members also came forward raising slogans in response.
Stating that by slogan shouting they would achieve nothing, and that they should not obstruct other members during Zero Hour, Mr. Kurien asked for a separate notice for the discussion. However, the Congress members did not relent. Subsequently, the Chair adjourned the proceedings for 10 minutes.
‘Engineering defections’
BJP Ministers were always ready to rush to different parts of the country to “engineer defections” but were failing to fulfil their “Raj Dharma” by coming to the aid of the flood-affected, the Congress said outside Parliament.
“When it comes to breaking governments, the Ministers rush to the States to engineer defections, but when it comes to helping people affected due to floods then no one visits the affected States, especially in the north-east,” senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said.
Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ministers, Mr. Azad accused them of being insensitive to the sufferings of people in flood-ravaged parts of the country: the Modi government was in “deep slumber,” he said, adding that instead of attending to the victims of this human tragedy, providing relief, the BJP Ministers were indulging in “petty politicking.”
Mr. Azad said one crore people had been marooned across the country and an estimated 300 people had died.
“Yet the BJP government makes only perfunctory noises, conducts aerial surveys and provides little relief,” he said.
In Gujarat alone, there have been 128 deaths because of the floods, 82 in Assam, 16 in Rajasthan, four in Himachal Pradesh, 34 in West Bengal, six in Jammu and Kashmir, 18 in Odisha and eight in Jharkhand, he added.
The Congress leader stressed that the flood situation in the country, particularly in Assam and Gujarat, was serious, but neither the Prime Minister nor any Cabinet Minister had visited the flood- affected areas.
(With Smita Gupta)