BJP president and Union Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda has been named Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha. Nadda replaces Union Minister Piyush Goyal, who recently won the Lok Sabha election and took oath on Monday as a member of the Lok Sabha.
Earlier this month, Nadda took over the office of the Union Health Ministry. He was also assigned the Chemicals and Fertilisers Ministry. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge is the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha. After he took an oath as Union Minister, it was expected that he would step down from the post of BJP's national president.
Nadda took over from the current Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, in 2020.
Besides Nadda, 11 other members of the Upper House of Parliament are in the Union Council of Ministers. Congratulating Nadda, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh urged him to accommodate the views of the opposition in the House. "Greetings to J P Nadda ji on his being nominated as the Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha. As Venkaiah Naidu garu might have said -- if the Leader of the House can accommodate, the Opposition can cooperate," he posted on 'X'.
Meanwhile, the BJP on Monday said it will launch a nationwide programme on the 1975 Emergency to "expose" the Congress' "authoritarianism" and its disregard for the Constitution. BJP president JP Nadda will address the main event, titled "Dark Days of Democracy", at its headquarters on Tuesday, the party's chief spokesperson Anil Baluni said in a statement. According to Article 352 of the Constitution, the president can proclaim an Emergency if there is a grave threat to the security of the country -- whether by war or external aggression or armed rebellion.
Baluni said, "The Emergency stands as an unforgettable dark chapter in India's robust democracy. The then-prime minister Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency on the nation on June 25, 1975, marking a severe curtailment of democratic freedoms." Over the next 21 months, the then-Congress government held the country's democracy and the Constitution "captive, unleashing countless atrocities on the people, media and opposition leaders", he said. Baluni said BJP leaders, officebearers and karyakartas will participate in the programmes across the country "to protest" against the imposition of the Emergency in 1975.
"They will expose how the Congress strangled the Constitution, deprived citizens of their rights, committed atrocities against opposition leaders for 21 months, suppressed the media, silenced truth-tellers, undermined India's democratic integrity and oppressed people under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) and Defence of India Rules (DIR)," he added.
