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Taking a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday likened him to “Brahma, the creator”, who controls everything, and said he alone knows when the Winter Session of Parliament will be convened.
“I have talked to many ministers, the Speaker, Lok Sabha Secretary General, but no one knows the dates of Parliament session. Only one man knows and they call him Brahma, the creator,” he added.
The Congress went on to say the BJP is scared of a discussion of the alleged “growth of wealth” of Jai Shah, son of BJP president Amit Shah.
The Centre, quoting the Constitution, said the House ought to be convened within six months of the last sitting, and it therefore has time to convene the Winter Session.
Along with Kharge, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad told reporters that the Centre is running away from Parliament to hide “corruption” and its failures. Azad quipped that the BJP will have to share with the House the Shah “formula” of making money. “Why aren’t they sharing that formula? Crores of unemployed youth would have got its benefit,” he said.
He said the alleged corruption in the Rafale aircraft deal, problems in GST implementation and after-effects of demonetisation will also have to be discussed in the House. To avoid these, the government is deferring the Parliament session he added.
The Congress also refuted the charge by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley that it had curtailed sessions when it was in power. Congress MP Anand Sharma said in 2011 and in 2012, the Winter Session was held for one month each.
People’s ParliamentCPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury urged the Opposition to seriously consider discussing issues that matter to all Indians in a Peoples’ Parliament. “Farmers crisis, GST mess, corruption cases, questions around Rafale deal, economic slowdown, communal hate campaigns, poor law and order and joblessness have to be discussed,” he said.
Meanwhile, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad defended the delay and said the Centre will convene the session soon. “Usually, care is taken not to overlap the Parliament session with Assembly elections. It has been done so in the past also,” Kumar said.
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