Of session,
FM invokes Nehru to remind Cong of MPS’ lawmaking responsibilities
NEW DELHI: With no visible end to Congress-led protests in sight, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Monday the ongoing winter session of Parliament was threatened with a washout. Earlier in the day, Jaitley and parliamentary affairs minister Venkaiah Naidu’s meeting with some senior Congress leaders failed to make any headway on the goods and services tax (GST) bill.
“The last Session of the Parliament did not function. The current Session of the Parliament is also threatened with a wash out. The reasons for the wash out of the current Session keep changing by the hour,” Jaitley wrote in a social media post where he also invoked India’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru to remind the Congress of the responsibilities of parliamentarians in lawmaking and smooth functioning of the House.
Later, in an interview with NDTV, Jaitley hit out at the top two Congress leaders, asking its vice-president Rahul Gandhi to stop being a “crybaby”, and said party chief Sonia Gandhi’s statement that she is Indira Gandhi’s daughter-in-law “reeks of political entitlement”.
The finance minister also said in the interview that he sees “the writing on the wall — the Congress would not allow the GST bill to be passed”, while he described the Congress-government meeting as a “non-meeting” because the party
came “without their important leader (Mallikarjun Kharge)”. The finance minister, however, added he would try to bring the Congress on board on the GST issue until the last day.
Reacting sharply to Jaitley’s comments, Congress spokesperson Tom Vadakkan said, “It is like the Devil preaching the Gospel. His remarks smack of serious memory loss as it was he who propounded that disruption of Parliament was also a form of democratic expression of views and it was he who disrupted the House over Amit Shah’s arrest when the GST bill was being discussed.”
The ongoing session of Parliament has seven more days and the government has had limited success in pushing its legislative agenda. While the Lower House, where the government has a majority, is transacting business, 16 bills, including the 122nd Constitution amendment