A war of words is on between the Telugu Desam Party and Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu’s office over TDP leader Y.S. Chowdary’s resignation speech in Rajya Sabha last Friday.
Mr. Chowdary had earlier claimed that he was being denied the fair right to detail reasons for resigning from the Narendra Modi government as the Chairman’s office had edited his farewell speech. “If any Minister resigns under Rule 241 of Rajya Sabha rules, he is allowed to present his side in the House. I was told that as per the rules a draft of my speech has to be cleared by the Chairman’s office. They approved the speech after heavily editing it,” Mr. Chowdary said last Tuesday.
The Hindu accessed the edited portions of the speech. Sentences where any direct allegation has been made against the government were edited out. Like for instance, the line, “It pains us to note that the media was made to believe and cover as if we demanding funds at the cost of Defence.” Or the line: “Today, we are engulfed by a feeling that BJP too is not sensitive enough to our aspirations. The response had been by and large very disappointing.”
Even indirect reference to local rival YSR Congress was removed from the speech, as in the line: “… as it had been made out to be by our local opposition parties, who seem to have sworn in to take political advantage of everything.”
Mr. Chowdary said the resignation was not to earn political brownie points. On Friday he read out his speech, including many portions that were edited out. Protesting against it he shot off a letter to the Chairman’s office. “The expunged portion of my personal explanation was more than the un-expunged one,” he wrote.
There has been no response from the Chairman’s office to Mr. Chowdary’s letter yet.
