(From left) DMK MP Tiruchi Siva, Congress leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma, NCP’s Vandana Chavan and CPM’s K K Ragesh at Parliament. (Express photo by Prem Nath Pandey)
An unprecedented 431 amendments, running into 44 pages, were moved in Rajya Sabha to the Motion of Thanks to the President’s address by 12 MPs, including those from the Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC), Samajwadi Party, DMK, CPI and the CPM.
Among the amendments are those moved by Congress’s Digvijaya Singh and Madhusudan Mistry that regret the fact that the President’s address fails to mention the resentment caused by the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the NRC, and the NPR.
Singh moved one on the lack of mention of the incarceration of former Jammu and Kashmir chief ministers and how “social tensions and economic policies led to lower GDP and loss of employment”. Mistry moved an amendment on failure to recognise the plight of Muslims in India and their dismal socioeconomic conditions.
431 amendments: Immaterial, but embarrassing for govt
These amendments do not make any material difference to the government’s functioning. But it is an embarrassment for the government that Rajya Sabha also expresses regret to the President’s speech, which was drafted by the government. This is a tool used by the Opposition to express strong differences with the ruling party.
MDMK leader Vaiko moved an amendment regretting the lack of mention of the need to implement recommendations of the Swaminathan Committee for farmers, to “broad-base CAA to confer citizenship to Sri Lankan Tamils”, and to review the “discriminatory and communal” law to stop protests across the country.
TMC’s Sukhendu Sekhar Roy moved amendments seeking additions at the end of the Motion of Thanks to the President’s address regretting its failure to “acknowledge hardships and anxieties of people” as a result of CAA, as also the government’s failure to allay people’s “fear of a nationwide NRC and NPR”. Amendments moved by Roy also regret that the address did not take into account “hardships of peaceful protesters, including students who were illegally detained, denied medical care, lathi-charged, fired at, and subjected to other forms of torture”.
Leader of Opposition in the Upper House, Congress’s Ghulam Nabi Azad, accused the government of using “divisive” issues such as CAA, triple talaq law and abrogation of Article 370 to steer public attention away from its “failures” to create 10 crore jobs, bringing back black money, and keeping its promise of giving Rs 15 lakh to every citizen.
Countering BJP MP Bhupendra Yadav’s accusation that opposition parties “engineered Shaheen Bagh,” Azad said, “It is your creation.”
He said: “This government is demolishing institutions and on August 5 last year, it demolished the institution of Parliament by bringing a Bill by stealth; no time was allocated by the Business Advisory Committee, the Bill was not circulated…. Former CMs are (now) in jail. I was here (in Delhi) because of Parliament session, or else I would also have been there (in J&K),” Azad said.
TMC’s Roy tore into the government for its changing stance on NRC. He called the government “dashanan (ten-headed)”, which makes “different speeches from its different heads”. He said Home Minister Amit Shah had intervened during the Question Hour in Parliament when his junior minister was fielding questions on NRC to emphatically assert that a citizens’ register across the country is on its way.
TRS’s Keshava Rao said it is not possible to change the Constitution with a law. Elamaram Kareem (CPI-M) said, “The President’s address is missing real issues of the country: the economic crisis.”
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