PM speech: Cong mulls privilege move
Stung by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s aggressive address in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, wherein he charged that it was the UPA that had copied the schemes of the NDA under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and not the other way round, the Congress is looking at the possibility of moving a notice for breach of privilege against him.
"If legally found admissible, why can’t action be taken," party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi demanded after he had dwelt at length on the subject of the ‘several false and misleading’ statements made by Modi in his address.
Accusing the Prime Minister of "taking liberties with truth, economizing with truth’’, Singhvi said: "Is it fair for the Prime Minister to mislead the House? Is it not that he has been economical with truth?" He cited many instances to contradict the prime minister’s claim that it was the UPA that had copied the NDA’s welfare programmes. “The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan may have been started by the Vajpayee government but it was "nothing but the District Primary Education Programme" started by the Congress government
in 1993-94, and later the Congress dispensation gave Constitutional entitlement to Right to education,” said Singhvi. The Congress spokesperson also observed that the genesis of Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority was in the Malhotra Committee report of 1994. A regulator was set up by the Congress government, but it was an interim regulator. He said that though the Antyodaya Yojana was started by the Vajpayee government in December 2000, till the Congress came to power in 2004 many states had not even identified the poor and then the National Food Security Act of 2013 gave a right to 2/3rd population. "We would have excused if any other leader and not the PM had said this... He has compared apples with oranges, gold with dirt," Singhvi added. The privilege move may not materialise eventually, but this attitude on the part of the Congress party clearly shows that the kind of bipartisanship that is needed for the smooth functioning of Parliament is evidently missing.