‘Democracy can become a tyranny without criticism’

IN PARLIAMENT VicePresident Hamid Ansari bids goodbye to the Rajya Sabha as members praise him for the way he handled the House

NEW DELHI: As Vice-President Hamid Ansari bid adieu to the Rajya Sabha, he cautioned that if opposition parties were not allowed to freely criticise the government’s policies, a democracy ran the risk of turning into a tyranny.

In his farewell speech in the Upper House, which he presided over for 10 years, Ansari quoted India’s first vice-president Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan to say, “Democracy can become a tyranny if opposition parties are not allowed to criticise government policies. The opposition also has no right to disrupt the House.”

Ansari, who was hailed by opposition leaders for not allowing passage of bills in din, maintained that the Rajya Sabha’s role was to be a calibrated restraint on hasty legislation.

“It has upheld that discussion is an indispensable preliminary to wise action, deviation from this golden rule neither to diligent policy making nor to our claim to be a mature democracy,” Ansari said as former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh thanked Hamid Ansari for being a friend, philosopher and guide.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Jaitley and others thanked Ansari for his role in handling the Upper House.

The Vice-President also recalled that when he entered the House, an eminent leader told him that he would have to face a lot of troubles but he should keep smiling.

“I ventured to think that I succeeded in fair measures. The chair is just an umpire in cricket and its only source of reference is the Rule Book,” he said in his parting shot as he recited Urdu couplets and bid adieu amid a standing ovation.

Along with Ansari, three other members — Communist Party of India (Marxist) generalsecretary Sitaram Yechury, Trinamool’s Debabrata Bandopadhyay and BJP’s Dilip Pandya — also bid farewell as their term came to an end.

The House showered effusively praise on Yechury as finance minister Arun Jaitley said he raised the standard of debate. Jaitley quipped that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader never became a part of the government but made comments that were not practical or implementable. Pandya, an RSS member since he was eight years old, advised rival MPs not to criticise the organisation.

To this, Yechury said had Pandya, who was otherwise silent, spoken more in the House, he would have drawn more inspiration to attack the RSS.

Yechury also spoke about the days of United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition and said, “We have the intellectual patent of the term outside support.”