Parliament monsoon session: INDIA bloc to target Modi govt on '3 statements'

If the inaugural session of the 18th Lok Sabha earlier this month was marred by acerbic verbal duels between the Treasury and Opposition benches, Parliament’s budget session, which began on Monday (July 22), promises to be no different. Though proceedings in both Houses of Parliament went off smoothly on the first day of the monsoon session, there were clear signs that this uneasy truce would not last beyond the presentation of the Union Budget by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

Sources in the Opposition’s INDIA bloc told The Federal that “three statements” from the Treasury’s side, including one from Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, had prepared the ground for yet another acrimonious session in Parliament.

PM slams Opposition

In his customary remarks to the media ahead of the session, Modi shunned the niceties that Prime Ministers, including himself on several similar moments in the past, extend to the Opposition before the commencement of any session of Parliament. Rather than striking a conciliatory note, as past parliamentary praxis has been, the Prime Minister slammed the Opposition ahead of the monsoon session for attempting to “stifle the voice of the government” during the previous session that was convened from June 24 to July 3.

Recalling unprecedented scenes from the previous session when continuous sloganeering by Opposition MPs drowned his over two-hour long reply to the Motion of Thanks on the President’s Address, the Prime Minister said, “For 2.5 hours, an attempt was made to suppress the voice of the Prime Minister; they tried to not let me speak in Parliament”.

With the Opposition, particularly the Congress party relentlessly mocking Modi for single-handedly bringing the BJP’s tally in Lok Sabha below the majority mark for the first time in a decade and asserting that he had “lost the mandate”, the Prime Minister also put up a defiant front claiming that his government had won the popular vote to rule for a third consecutive term and slammed his rivals for “wasting Parliament’s time with negative politics”.

Opposition demands Pradhan's resignation over NEET issue

The INDIA bloc sees the PM’s remarks as “deliberate provocation”. “It is settled parliamentary principle that the onus of running Parliament smoothly is squarely on the Treasury benches. It is a principle that the BJP invoked tirelessly during the 10 years of the UPA government whenever its members disrupted House proceedings. The mandate of the Opposition is to keep the government under check and if we are not allowed to raise the issues of the people, the issues on which we fought the election just a month ago, then disruption is the only parliamentary means we can use to make the voice of the people heard,” Congress MP Manickam Tagore told The Federal.

Gaurav Gogoi, Congress’s deputy leader in the Lok Sabha said, “The PM is crying today about Opposition protesting while he was speaking during the last session but what about all the voices he has muzzled for 10 years – of students, farmers, the women of Manipur, the Agniveers, the youth. He should stop this farce and be prepared to face Parliament; even today when the issue of NEET was being discussed during Question Hour, he was not in the House”.

If Modi’s belligerence queered the pitch of reconciliation with the Opposition, two other statements made by his ministers inside Parliament further sowed the seeds of more rancour. With the Opposition making it clear even during the customary all-party meeting convened ahead of the Parliament session that they intend to hold the government to account over rampant irregularities in the conduct of the NEET exams, the Centre seems to have opted for hostility over resolution on the issue.

The NEET controversy triggered a war of words between Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan and the Opposition shortly after the Lok Sabha convened for its Question Hour. Congress MP Manickam Tagore cast the first stone, pointedly asking for Pradhan’s resignation for his failure to stop the irregularities in the conduct of exams that have led to “70 cases of paper leaks in the past seven years”. Later, Samajwadi Party chief and Kannauj MP Akhilesh Yadav too stressed in the Lok Sabha that a fair investigation into the NEET row would not take place until Pradhan remains the education minister.

Pradhan retorted by saying there was “no evidence” to prove that question papers for NEET or any other examination paper had ever been leaked and that he serves as the education minister – a portfolio he has held since July 2021 – “at the mercy of our leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.

Rahul: Pradhan blaming 'everybody except himself'

The education minister’s stout rejection of allegations that NEET question papers were leaked led to a prompt intervention by Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi who slammed Pradhan for blaming “everybody except himself”. Rahul added, “I don’t think he (Pradhan) understands what’s going on here. The issue is that there are millions of students in the country who are convinced that the Indian examination system is a fraud... that if you are rich, you can buy the Indian examination system and this is the same feeling that we as the Opposition have”.

Aided by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, who also ticked off Rahul and other Opposition leaders for raising questions on the examination system, Pradhan hit out at the LoP for calling the exam apparatus a fraud. The education minister also alleged that the UPA government had “withdrawn the education reform Bills in 2010 under pressure from the private colleges lobby”.

The Opposition, sources said, has decided to continue its protests against Pradhan and the Centre on the NEET issue until the government agrees to have a “detailed debate on the matter in both Houses of Parliament”. Sources said there is also a broad consensus among INDIA bloc leaders to intensify their demand for Pradhan’s resignation.

Late Monday evening Sonia Gandhi, chairperson of the Congress parliamentary party (CPP), too told her colleagues in the Congress parliamentary strategy group that they must vociferously raise the issues connected with NEET, unemployment, price rise, special status for Bihar and Andhra Pradesh and the controversial Agniveer scheme in Parliament, irrespective of the government’s defiant attitude.

Congress’s Rajya Sabha MP Pramod Tiwari told The Federal that Sonia will convey the same message to all her party MPs during a meeting of the CPP scheduled to take place before parliament’s proceedings commence on Tuesday (July 23).

INDIA bloc not to disrupt FM's budget speech

INDIA bloc leaders said that they will not disrupt Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget speech in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, barring some sloganeering on issues of unemployment, price rise, recurring railway accidents and denial of special package and special status to Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. However, senior leaders of the INDIA bloc will meet at the residence of Congress president and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, on Tuesday evening to chart out their combined floor strategy for the remainder of the budget session.

Sources said the INDIA bloc, particularly leaders from the Congress, the RJD and CPI-ML, will also intensify the demand for special status category and special financial package for Bihar in light of Union minister Pankaj Chaudhary’s statement made in the Lok Sabha on Monday. Chaudhary, the junior minister of finance, informed the Lok Sabha in response to a question by JD (U) MP Ramprit Mandal, that a case for granting Bihar a special category status is “not made out” in light of the criteria laid out in such matters by the National Development Council.

The JD (U), whose support is crucial for the Modi government’s stability, has been a vocal proponent of granting Bihar a special category status or a special financial package in view of the state’s socio-economic backwardness. The BJP’s other key allies in the eastern state, Chirag Paswan’s LJP (Ram Vilas) and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustan Awam Morcha (HAM) have also backed the twin demands.

The INDIA bloc believes that the Centre’s outright rejection of granting Bihar a special category status and special package will “create a rift” within the ruling NDA coalition and give parties such as the RJD, the CPI-ML and the Congress added ammunition to target the BJP, Nitish Kumar’s JD (U), the LJP and the HAM in the Bihar Assembly polls due next year.

RJD questions PM Modi, Nitish

RJD’s chief spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha told The Federal that by invoking the NDC’s decision and a 2012 (UPA-era) recommendation by a inter-ministerial group to deny Bihar a special category status and special package, the BJP was “playing a fraud on the people of Bihar”. “This is such a poor excuse. If you though the NDC decision or the IMG recommendation were sacrosanct, why did Modi and Nitish Kumar tell the people of Bihar during the Lok Sabha campaign that the state will get special status and special package if NDA is voted to power? Were you deliberately lying to the people just to get their votes,” Jha said.

The RJD MP added, “An NDC decision can be changed by one executive order just like this government changed a nearly 60-year-old decision a day back by lifting the ban on government servants from joining the RSS. The fact is that the BJP was never interested in giving Bihar its due but we in the INDIA bloc have also decided that come what may, we will force this government to give Bihar both – special category status and special financial package... if we have to fight for it from the streets to the Parliament, we will do it.”