Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: The governing NDA on Tuesday came down heavily on Rahul Gandhi over the no-confidence motion against Speaker Om Birla, with parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju saying the leader of the opposition was attacking democratic institutions because of the realisation that there is no way he could lead his party to win an election.Rijiju said Priyanka Gandhi Vadra would have been a better choice for leading the Congress and accused Rahul of publicly seeking foreign intervention to fight the alleged threat to democracy in India.The governing coalition sought to frame the no-confidence motion as yet another instance of Rahul railroading his Congress colleagues and others in the opposition to support his whim, with Rijiju claiming that at least 50 opposition MPs had confided in him their misgivings about the move against Birla.Rahul undermining dignity of Parl with his antics: RijijuNDA speakers kept up the attack even as members belonging to the INDIA bloc justified the move against the Speaker and accused him of gagging the opposition at the govt’s instance. While DMK’s TR Baalu called him a “gentleman” who had suspended so many opposition MPs, TMC’s Mahua Moitra called the motion a divine retribution for the speaker for “wrongly” expelling her in 2023. His karma has caught up with him, she said. Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Arvind Sawant said Birla was under pressure to act against the opposition.Rijiju accused Rahul of undermining the dignity of Parliament with his “antics”. He tried to forcibly hug the PM. “What kind of LoP does that?” the minister asked.Other speakers from the treasury benches, including JDU’s Rajiv Ranjan, Shiv Sena’s Shrikant Shinde and TDP’s Lavu Srikrishna Devarayalu, highlighted Rahul’s frequent absence from key debates in the House and accused him of undermining national interests by questioning sacrifices of the armed forces. Shinde called him a “leader of vacation and not leader of opposition.” NDA MPs praised Birla for giving chances to first-time MPs and helping Lok Sabha register record productivity during his tenure.Rijiju’s claim about restiveness in opposition’s ranks over the motion against the Speaker came against the backdrop of TMC reversing its earlier stand after Congress warmed up to its own move to seek the removal of CEC Gyanesh Kumar who had riled up West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee by going ahead with the SIR of electoral rolls in the poll-bound state.He said Priyanka Gandhi would have been a better choice leading Congress, leading to Congress MPs rising in protest. Rijiju also contrasted Congress’s approach towards the Speaker by saying that the opposition chose not to bring a motion of no-confidence against then Speaker Somnath Chatterjee even when he had blocked telecast of proceedings in 2008 when the Congress had used bribes to engineer a majority.Congress members disrupted the minister when he referred to the LoP’s meeting with the Chinese ambassador when armies of the two countries were engaged in a tense standoff in Doklam in 2017.Union minister Rajiv Ranjan (Lalan) Singh said the opposition has been relentlessly disrupting the functioning of the House, unmindful of the fact that for each hour that Parliament runs, Rs 1.9 crore is spent, and Rs 9 crore for every day of the session. “These people don’t let it run, whose money is being wasted, it is taxpayers’ money that they are wasting,” the JDU neta said.Referring to Mahua Moitra’s remarks of the Speaker throttling opposition’s voice, Lalan Singh said that when Mamata was the sole MP from her party, it was then Speaker Somnath Chatterjee who did not allow her to speak. Then Mamata was part of NDA, yet the saffron alliance did not bring any no-confidence motion against the Speaker.
