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Winter session of Parliament: After three days of heated debate on maintaining the dignity of BR Ambedkar, the winter session is likely to end on a sour note with Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi in focus.
Parliament Winter Session: One Nation, One Election Bill in Lok Sabha
Parliament Winter Session Update: It all started with promises of peace from both the ruling and opposition parties, but with a day left for the winter session to end, it ended with rival MPs shouting and pushing at each other on Thursday. Unprecedented scenes of unrest were witnessed. ,
There was a lot of activity this winter session – from the ‘One Nation One Election’ Bill and the now-rejected impeachment motion against Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar to the fiery maiden speech of new Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi to Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s controversial speech on the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution.
After three days of heated debate inside the House on maintaining the dignity of BR Ambedkar, the winter session will likely conclude on a bitter note as Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi takes center stage.
Here’s a recap:
Uproar in Parliament, FIR against Rahul Gandhi
After two BJP MPs were hospitalized on Thursday (December 19), Congress MP Rahul Gandhi is now facing an FIR in the Parliament scuffle case. A female MP also accused him of “misbehavior”. Balasore MP Pratap Sarangi, 69, needed stitches in the temple, while his colleague Mukesh Rajput also suffered head injuries.
Anger and voices grew louder as BJP and opposition MPs moved towards each other over Amit Shah’s remarks on BR Ambedkar. The problem arose minutes before the start of the sitting of both the houses at 11 am as both the parties were protesting on the steps of Parliament’s ‘Makar Dwar’, which is the entry and exit gate reserved for MPs.
BJP MPs claimed that Rahul Gandhi tried to pass through the middle of the stairs where he was standing, ignoring the adjacent walkway, and was injured in the resulting scuffle. However, some opposition MPs claimed that BJP members refused to give way to Gandhi who was heading towards the Lok Sabha to attend the House proceedings.
There was a huge uproar in both the Houses with slogans of ‘Jai Bhim’ raised from both sides and the House was adjourned without any transaction. Congress MPs met Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and submitted a complaint against BJP MPs.
Both BJP and Congress held press conferences and directly blamed each other for the feud. Union Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said, “Rahul Gandhi is not fit to hold the post of leader of the opposition,” while Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said he was pushed so hard that he lost his balance and sat down.
Ambedkar controversy
A major political controversy erupted on 18 December when Congress and other opposition parties launched an all-out attack on Amit Shah for his remarks on BR Ambedkar and demanded his dismissal, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top BJP leaders rallied in his defense and said that he had exposed the “anti-Ambedkar” stance of the Congress.
“Baba Saheb is the creator of the Constitution and a great man who gave direction to the country. The country will not tolerate his insult or the insult to the Constitution made by him. The Home Minister should apologise!” said Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha. “They are against the Constitution. He had earlier said that we will change the Constitution. They are against Ambedkar and his ideology. Their entire work has to be finished.” The entire country knows the contribution of Ambedkar and the Constitution.”
As opposition parties united and protested against him and disrupted both houses of Parliament, alleging that his comments had insulted Ambedkar and demanding an apology from him, Shah said that Congress had violated the Constitution. Following the discussion, his comments were distorted in a malicious campaign to suggest that the opposition had established that the party was against Ambedkar and reservation.
“There has been a fashion now – Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar. If he had taken God’s name so many times, he would have got heaven for seven births (It has become a fashion to say Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar. If he had taken God’s name so many times, he would have got a place) Heaven In), “he said in the Rajya Sabha during the debate on the Constitution.
Modi also attacked the Congress, saying its “rotten ecosystem” and “malicious lies” cannot hide its misdeeds and said the Home Minister exposed the opposition party’s “dark history of insulting Ambedkar”. Is.
“They are clearly shocked and appalled by the facts presented to them, which is why they are now indulging in theatrics. Sadly for them, people know the truth,” he said in a series of posts on X.
Parties like Congress, Trinamool Congress, AAP, RJD, SP, Shiv Sena (UBT) and Left parties protested against Shah inside and outside the Parliament. Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien submitted a notice to move a privilege motion against him, following which Congress President and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge gave the notice.
“I give notice of a question of privilege against Home Minister Shri Amit Shah under Rule 188 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Rajya Sabha (Rajya Sabha),” Kharge said in his notice.
The uproar in Parliament also spread to the national capital and the streets of other states like Maharashtra, Bihar and Tamil Nadu, where various parties staged protests. In Delhi, AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal protested outside the BJP along with hundreds of supporters raising slogans of ‘Amit Shah apologise, Amit Shah do shame’.
From Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Tamil Nadu counterpart MK Stalin, everyone condemned Shah’s remarks. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and former Deputy CM of Bihar Tejashwi Yadav also criticized the Home Minister on this matter.
‘One nation, one election’
Two ‘One Nation, One Election’ (ONOE) Bills, which also require an amendment to the Constitution, provide for simultaneous holding of elections, and were introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 17 after a heated debate.
Opposition parties termed the draft laws – a Constitution Amendment Bill and an Ordinary Bill – as an attack on the federal structure, which were rejected by the central government. Speaking to reporters at the Parliament complex, Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi had termed the bills as “anti-constitutional”. He had said, “This is against the federalism of our country. We are opposing the bill.”
The BJP and its allies like TDP, JD(U) and Shiv Sena have strongly defended the bills, saying frequent elections are a hindrance to development programs and simultaneous voting will boost them by cutting election expenditure.
Priyanka, along with former BJP Union ministers Anurag Thakur and PP Choudhary, will be among the 21 Lok Sabha MPs who will be part of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) that will simultaneously examine the two bills on elections.
A total of 21 MPs will be included in the committee. Rajya Sabha will announce its 10 members in a separate notice. Of the proposed members in the committee, 14 are from the BJP-led NDA, including 10 from the BJP.
According to official sources, consideration is being given to making BJP MP Bhartrihari Mahtab the head of JPC. The BJP is certain to get the post of chairman for the important panel, he said, adding that Mahtab’s parliamentary experience could work in his favour. He is a seven-time Lok Sabha member from Odisha and currently heads the Standing Committee on Finance Ministry.
debate on the constitution
Amid the new Rahul Gandhi controversy and Amit Shah’s alleged insult to BR Ambedkar, the Parliament debate on the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution seems to be taking on a new life of its own. But, it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who created the atmosphere for a scathing attack on the Nehru-Gandhi family.
On 14 December, Modi alleged that generations of the family had attacked the Constitution and left its soul in a “bloodstained state”. Responding to the two-day debate on ’75 Years of Glorious Journey of the Constitution of India’, he said the first PM Jawaharlal Nehru had “tasted blood” by amending the Constitution and his future generations would revisit the guiding document again and again. They kept attacking, due to which it became dilapidated.
“They tasted blood by changing the Constitution and they kept attacking it. He had tasted blood. He left the spirit of the Constitution bleeding. The seed which was sown by the first Prime Minister was nurtured by the second Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.” He said, ”When Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister, he continued the attack on the Constitution.”
Targeting Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, he claimed that during the 60 years of Congress’s tenure, the Constitution was changed 75 times. He said Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency by misusing the Constitution and also clipped the wings of the courts through constitutional amendments to capture the judiciary.
He said, “When the Constitution was completing 25 years, it was torn. Emergency was imposed in 1975, all constitutional rights were taken away and the country was turned into a prison. He said, “All the rights of the citizens were taken away and the media was controlled.” He said, “Congress cannot eradicate this sin. Whenever democracy is discussed across the world, this sin of Congress will be remembered.
Before his remarks on Ambedkar, Shah also made more or less similar comments while concluding the debate. During his speech on 17 December, he said that Congress treated the Constitution as a “private fief” of a family and “frauded” the Parliament.
“In the last 75 years, the Congress committed fraud in the name of the Constitution… They (Nehru-Gandhi family) not only treated the party as their personal property but also treated the Constitution as their ‘personal fiefdom’,” he alleged. ‘, adding that he amended the document several times to remain in power.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra: New MP on the block
Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra seems to have had an interesting Parliament – be it her fiery maiden speech, which started discussions on how she could be a “big threat” to brother Rahul’s political career, or Palestine and Bangladesh should be the ones giving statements in their support. He described Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech for the debate on the Constitution in the Lok Sabha as boring and like sitting for “double period of mathematics” in school.
During her 32-minute speech in Hindi, Priyanka said Modi had failed to understand that the Constitution is the “Constitution of India” and not the “Constitution of the Union”. Launching a scathing attack on the BJP, he said that if the results of the Lok Sabha elections had not come, the ruling party would have started changing the Constitution.
She was combative yet restrained, never raising her voice as she raised key issues of the opposition. These included BJP’s alleged attempts to change the Constitution, atrocities on women, incidents of violence in Sambhal and Manipur and demand for a nationwide caste census.
Criticizing the BJP for alleged divisive politics, the Congress MP said that where the Constitution has provided a protective shield of unity, seeds of suspicion and hatred are being sown. “The Safety armor Unity is being broken. The Prime Minister respects the Constitution, but when there is a demand for justice from Sambhal, Hathras and Manipur, there is not even a wrinkle on his forehead,” he said.
When it came to making bold statements, he did so twice by carrying a bag into Parliament in support of Palestine and Bangladesh. When she was criticized for her “Palestine bag”, she called it “typical patriarchy” and insisted that no one would decide what she would wear.
Not only did he make his views public on the Gaza war by strongly criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu-led Israel in Parliament, he also raised the issue of alleged attacks on minorities in Bangladesh.
(With PTI inputs)
