Oppn disrupts RS proceedings, targeting Jaitely, Goyal for their statements against Congress leader
New Delhi : Familiar scenes of disruption of proceedings in the Rajya Sabha were witnessed once again on Thursday. The Modi sarkar’s outreach towards the opposition to ensure the smooth functioning of the winter session seems to be having a limited impact.
Three ministers – leader of the house Arun Jaitley, coal and power minister Piyush Goyal and minister of state for external affairs V K Singh were at the receiving end of the opposition’s ire. Both Jaitley and Goyal were involved because of the statements and comments they had made on Wednesday about Congress leader Kumari Selja’s observations on the Modi model and the questions about her caste while entering a temple in Gujarat state. Goyal had called her comments “manufactured discrimination” and thus clubbed it with the government’s description of the protests over intolerance as ‘manufactured dissent.” The house could not function on Wednesday after this comment.To resolve this impasse, it was decided at a meeting of all leaders with chairman Hamid Ansari that the leader of the House ( Jaitley) would say “a few words and the gentleman ( Goyal) would then withdraw and regret, but in the house, only Goyal expressed regret. He said: “In view of the chair’s decision to review the records, I regret my remarks with respect to my colleague Kumari Selja.”
But the Congress members were not pacified and remained in the well of the house shouting slogans “Mafi maango, mafi maango (express apology),” and “Constitution ka apman bandh karo, bandh karo (stop insulting the Constitution). Besides, the affected member Selja refused to accept the regret. The TMC leader Derek O’Brien who wanted the issue resolved said: “But, there was chapter one in this. That has taken us all by surprise.”
Later, Jaitley issued the necessary clarification as discussed with the chairman and the matter came to an end.
“SINGH, GO BACK”
Union Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh also faced the ire of opposition members especially from the Bahujan Samaj Party as he came into the Rajya Sabha. There was a demand that he be sent out of the house as he had “violated” his oath to the Constitution.
Senior BSP member Satish Misra said: “V.K. Singh is here and he is not entitled to sit in the house because he insulted the Constitution. He does know how to address people… he has used such words for dalits. He has taken oath under the Constitution which says all human beings are equal. He cannot take the name of an animal while talking about a human being. He should leave the house on his own.” Misra also requested deputy chairman P J Kurien who was presiding over the proceedings that as the custodian of the house, he should see that only those entitled sit here. But both government members and the chair said the minister had all rights to sit in the house and this led to an adjournment.
The Congress also joined the BSP members in this protest after the house met again and its member Pramod Tiwari said:” The government does not want to run the house, that is why the person who violated the Constitution is sitting here…”
However, as Home Minister Rajnath Singh came to speak on the Chennai floods, the opposition members settled down, calling it an issue of national importance. The protest is in the context of Singh’s remarks outside the house. Asked to comment on the incident of two Dalit children being burnt to death in Haryana’s Faridabad adjoining Delhi, he had said it was a local incident and as it happens, that even if a stone is thrown on a dog, the Centre is held responsible.
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Selja’s claims dismissed
Ahmedabad: A priest of famous Dwarka temple and a senior Gujarat government official, who was associated with the shrine, on Thursday refuted former Union minister Kumari Selja’s claims that she was asked to reveal her caste during her visit to the temple in 2013. Shambhuji Thaker, the priest who claimed to be present at
the temple during Selja’s visit, alleged that the Congress leader has made false claim, and on the contrary, she had termed her visit as “a very good experience”.
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