New Delhi, July 3: INDIA bloc parties, led by the Congress, staged a walkout of Rajya Sabha on Wednesday after the Leader of the Opposition was not allowed to intervene during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech.
Congress’s Mallikarjun Kharge wanted to intervene during Modi’s reply to a discussion on motion thanking the President for her address to the joint sitting of the Parliament.
Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar, however, did not heed to his requests, leading to INDIA block MPs, raising slogans and asking for the LoP to be allowed to speak.
Modi continued his speech amid the slogan-shouting.
This went on for some time with Kharge repeatedly pleading to be allowed to speak. When the permission did come through, INDIA bloc MPs staged a walkout of the House.
RSS has always been anti-Constitution: Kharge
Flanked by INDIA bloc MPs after they staged a walkout from the Rajya Sabha, Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday accused the RSS, the ideological mentor of the ruling BJP, of being anti-Constitution.
The Congress leader also accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of giving wrong information in the House.
The MPs of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), who staged the walkout from the Upper House of Parliament in the middle of Modi’s reply to the debate on the Motion of Thanks on the president’s address, gathered at the gate of the old Parliament building, the Samvidhan Sadan.
Besides Kharge, Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and P Chidambaram, Nationalist Congress Party (SP) chief Sharad Pawar, DMK’s Tiruchi Siva, Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) Sagarika Ghose and Sushmita Dev, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha’s (JMM) Mahua Maji, Rashtriya Janata Dal’s (RJD) Manoj Jha and Shiv Sena-UBT’s Priyanka Chaturvedi were among those present.
“We staged a walkout because the prime minister, while replying to the debate on the president’s address, gave some wrong information…. It is his habit to tell lies, mislead people and speak against the truth,” Kharge said.
BJP calls Opposition demoralised, aimless
The BJP, on the other hand, flayed the opposition members for staging a walkout during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech in the Rajya Sabha and said their intention was to only create ruckus in the House as they did not have the “strength” to hear the truth.
“The opposition is demoralized, aimless and anarchic due to its defeat (in the Lok Sabha polls) for the third time in a row. It is disrespecting our constitutional values and is busy in conspiracy to hide its defeat,” BJP chief and Leader of the Rajya Sabha JP Nadda charged in a post on X.
“These negative efforts by them cannot hinder the NDA government’s journey towards achieving its goal of building a ‘developed India’,” he added. Nadda said that Prime Minister Modi paved the way for building a “developed India” in the Rajya Sabha in his reply to the Motion of Thanks to the President’s address.
‘Dangerous precedent’
After the entire episode, Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar remarked that the Opposition has set a “dangerous precedent antithetical to democratic values” by walking out during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reply during discussion on the motion of thanks to President’s address.
In his concluding remarks of the 264th session of Rajya Sabha before adjourning the House sine die, Dhankhar also termed the instance of Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge walking into the well of the House during the session “a disgrace to parliamentary conduct and proprietary”.
Summing up the proceedings of the session, the chairman said while there was active participation from both the treasury as well as opposition benches, he was constrained to make some observations that “weighed heavily on my mind over the disruptions that marred the proceedings”. (PTI)
