Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: Lok Sabha, already deadlocked over Rahul Gandhi’s insistence on referring to an unpublished book, was plunged into deeper impasse on Wednesday as BJP MP Nishikant Dubey turned to a pile of books with uncharitable references to members of the Nehru-Gandhi family to “expose” Congress.PM Modi’s reply to the motion of thanks on the President’s address had to be called off due to the stepped-up protest from the opposition.Dubey’s move was seen as BJP’s bid to turn the heat on Congress, which has been attacking Modi over bits of the unpublished book authored by ex-Army chief Gen M M Naravane (retd), and it further riled up the protesting opposition MPs in LS, who turned up the noise and tore papers, but not before the fourth-term member had his say for over a couple of minutes.TDP MP Krishna Tenneti, who was in the Chair, kept asking Dubey not to carry on and that his speech was against Speaker Om Birla’s ruling. “You listen to me. You cannot do this,” Tenneti said even as the BJP MP continued.The Chair later adjourned the House, but several opposition MPs questioned why Dubey was allowed to go on. Congress members later met LS Speaker Birla and demanded his suspension.The books Dubey mentioned included ‘Reminiscences of the Nehru Age’ by former private secretary to India’s first PM, M O Mathai; ‘Edwina and Nehru’, ‘Ceasefires’ and ‘The Red Sari’, and then touched on their content, including some controversial references to private lives besides allegations of corruption, amid furious protests.These books were either banned when Congress was in office or restricted to the extent that they were not available. “Since a book which is not published is being discussed, I want to speak about books which are full of stories of the corruption, deviousness, wanton indulgences and corruption of the Nehru family,” Dubey alleged, a charge he elaborated during a press conference later.Congress MPs, including Priyanka Gandhi, K C Venugopal and Deepender Hooda, urged Birla to suspend Dubey, and demanded that Rahul be allowed to speak before Modi’s reply on motion of thanks on the President’s address.Unrelenting protest from opposition members meant that Modi’s address scheduled for 5 pm was called off.In his comments to the media later, Dubey referred to more books, many of them he said were banned, to target Congress’s leading family over a host of allegations, including personal indulgences. This included ‘Himalayan Blunder’, a damning account of Indian leadership during the 1962 war with China which was banned, but became available later.
