Responding to Parvesh Verma’s speech on the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address, the Opposition parties alleged that “political masters at the top” are giving directions to make inflammatory speeches.
Participating in the debate, Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi demanded registering cases against Ministers and top BJP leaders for making inflammatory speeches to divide people on communal line. “They think that they can rule like dictators and make such speeches. It is unfortunate,” he said.
Gogoi said that for this Government, the students and women who are protesting against the CAA are “our enemies. But for me, they are my brothers and friends. They are telling about values of Mahatma Gandhi and Swami Vivekanand”. Referring to the JNU incident on January 5, Gogoi said people witnessed disturbing scenes in universities.
Students and professors at JNU were bleeding due to attack and police did not do anything, he said adding, “I am not questioning Delhi Police”. Delhi Police, he said, is capable of managing everything, but “what I feel is that political masters are dictating them and giving directions”.
“In front of Delhi Police, a boy fired on the people,” the Congress leader said adding “he must have been motivated by someone. I want to know who is pulling the trigger. It’s not the minister or that boy,” he added.
Attacking Verma, the Congress MP also said that a member banned by Election Commission for campaigning in Delhi was allowed to speak first in the House and “that shows the BJP’s attitude towards the Election Commission and Parliament”. Gogoi said the government should talk about the real problems of poverty, unemployment, and inequality as these issues are not yet over.
Speaking during the discussion, T R Baalu (DMK) wondered if the President had gone through his speech before reading it during the joint sitting of Parliament. He said that Budget has not provided anything to boost investment in agriculture sector. On Citizenship Amendment Act, he asked the government about the compulsion under which they came up with this law. “You want to discriminate among people,” he alleged.
Opposing the motion, Trinamool Congress’ Mahua Moitra said the government is betraying the people who have voted for them. “You have betrayed the tribal people in Gujarat on whose land you built a statue,” she said. She dubbed the National Population Register (NPR), National Register of Citizens and the CAA as the “biggest betrayal” of people of India. “People who voted for you in 2014 are horrified,” she said adding, “Today, you put a person banned by Election Commission to speak in parliament”.
She also said that the state of economy is abysmal and the finance minister was fearful in giving the target for the real GDP. “You have rubbished all economists, but your own former CEA appointed by you” is raising question marks on government data, she said. P V Midhun Reddy (YSRCP) said that his party was opposed to the NRC and the NPR and the government should not do anything which creates a sense of insecurity among minorities.
Vinayak Raut, member of former NDA constituent Shiv Sena, dared the BJP to give Bharat Ratna to Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. He also wanted to know how many Indians have gone to Kashmir after abrogation of Article 370.