Opposition parties accused the government of adjourning the Budget session of Parliament ahead of schedule to duck the debate on escalating prices of fuel and other essential commodities. Countering the charge, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi said that Opposition leaders in the Rajya Sabha’s Business Advisory Committee (BAC) had requested the session’s adjournment a day early in view of Ram Navami.
Not in a mood to spare the government, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, said that each day the country woke up to a fuel price hike and despite repeated demands from the Opposition, the government fled from a discussion by adjourning the House early. “They were worried that they could get exposed if such a debate happened,” he said. He added that two working days had been lost in the process.
The party also criticised the Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha, Piyush Goyal, for his “rare appearances” in the Upper House. “We have seen Arun Jaitley and his successor Thawar Chand Gehlot work as the Leader of House. They used to sit for extended period of times. It is extraordinary that the current leader of the House, Piyush Goyal, is rarely present,“ Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said, also pointing out that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the last eight years, had attended the House only a handful of times.
Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor in a tweet said that the government should have had the courage to listen to a serious debate on the fuel price rise and consumer inflation. He tweeted: “Though LS [Lok Sabha] passed a Bill on Weapons of Mass Destruction, GOI’s real strength is its weapons of Mass distraction. Aided and abetted by a complicit media pointless controversy over halal, hijab and azaan have driven away the focus from price rise.”
Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Derek O’Brien accused the government of arrogance for skipping the vital discussion. “PM Modi kissed the steps of this great institution on his first day. Now he and his govt are blatantly committing daylight murder of democracy,” he said.
Communist Party of India (CPI) leader Binoy Viswam lamented that the Parliament was no longer the place to discuss people-centric issues.
Mr. Joshi, however, maintained, “The Opposition requested in the BAC and I am using the word request carefully. I asked them in the Rajya Sabha Chairman’s office if they were firm on adjourning the House on April 7 and they replied in the affirmative. They said they have to go on Asthami and that’s why, if we can, we should adjourn by April 7. It was in the BAC and not informally.”
The Minister said he had called senior leaders, including Mr. Ramesh, and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (DMK) Tiruchi Siva for a meeting to reconfirm the request, and they had agreed with the proposal of adjourning a day early.
