WORD FROM MODI’S SPEECH IN RAJYA SABHA EXPUNGED

NEWDELHI:Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reply in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday on the debate over the motion of thanks to the President’s speech, which helped him score political points over the Opposition, also led to a word being expunged from the official records.

Talking about the much-debated National Population Register (NPR) in the Upper House, Modi lashed out at his political opponents for allegedly misleading people over the issue. He asked the Congress why it was fooling the public on the exercise, a count of all the people ordinarily residents in India, which some opposition politicians say could be a precursor to the National Register of Citizens, aimed at identifying illegal aliens.

“So much rumour is being spread. People are being misled. You had brought NPR in 2010. We are sitting here (in power) since 2014. Did we raise any question on the NPR?” Modi asked before using a word to indicate that the Opposition was deliberately misleading people that got expunged.

Words expunged by the record cannot be reported by the media as part of parliamentary proceedings.

According to parliamentary officials, expunging of words from the PM’s speech in Parliament is an extremely rare occurrence.

Parliamentary records show that this is the second time words used by Modi have been expunged. In 2018, during the felicitation of deputy chairman Harivansh in the Rajya Sabha, Modi tried to crack a joke about Congress’s BK Hariprasad, the Opposition candidate for deputy chairman. His lighthearted comments didn’t go down well with Opposition MPs, who raised strong objections.