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The predictability of the NDA defeating the first no-confidence motion on Friday was tempered by the spectacle of Rahul Gandhi hugging the Prime Minister Narendra Modi called him “immature and insecure” and warned him against “playing with national security for selfish ends”.
The NDA defeated the vote by 325 votes to the opposition’s 126. The trust vote was marked with fault-lines appearing in the opposition unity as well as the ruling coalition ranks. The motion was moved by former NDA partner Telugu Desham Party (TDP) and witnessed the BJP’s oldest ally, the Shiv Sena, abstaining from voting. From the opposition ranks, the AIADMK voted with the government while the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) boycotted the proceedings.
It was high drama in the Lok Sabha during the debate on no-confidence motion with Rahul Gandhi enveloping the PM after delivering a vitriolic speech against him. Gandhi accused the PM of “favouring his rich friends” especially in the Rafale fighter jets deal with the French government and asserted that he had turned from “chowkidaar to bhaagidaar (from gatekeeper to colluder)”.
The PM, in his reply, attacked both Rahul and Sonia Gandhi for engineering the no-trust motion to destabilise the country. “It is not wisdom or generosity that makes you come here and stand in front of me. It is just a desire to remove Modi and acquire power that makes you act in this manner,” said Modi. He took a jibe at Sonia Gandhi’s assertion earlier this week that “we have the numbers”.
“The Congress is in the habit of destabilising governments because one family cannot see anyone else in power. We heard the same statement ‘we have 272 and more are coming’ in 1999 when Atalji (Atal Behari Vajpayee’s) government was brought down by just one vote. The same modus operandi was repeated with H. D. Deve Gowda and Inder Kumar Gujaral and Chandrashekhar and Charan Singh earlier,” said Modi.
The ruling party will move a privilege motion against the Congress President for his references to a “shady deal” which, he said, escalated the price of the Rafale fighter jets from Rs 520 crore per jet to Rs 1600 per jet. Gandhi said he had met the French President who told him that there was no problem in sharing details relating to the Rafale deal in contrast to the Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman who had cited a secrecy pact as the reason for not sharing details including cost of equipment and weapons.
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