Rahul attacking institutions as he can’t win polls: Kiren Rijiju | India News
New Delhi: The ruling NDA came down heavily on Tuesday Rahul Gandhi Parliamentary Affairs Minister along with the no-confidence motion against Speaker Om Birla Kiren Rijiju He said the opposition leader was attacking democratic institutions because he realized there was no way his party could win the elections.Rijiju said that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra would have been a better choice to lead the Congress and accused Rahul of publicly seeking foreign interference to fight the perceived threat to democracy in India.As the ruling coalition sought to frame the no-confidence motion as another instance of Rahul railroading the opposition to get his Congress colleagues and others to support his wishes, Rijiju claimed that at least 50 opposition MPs had confided in him their doubts about action against Birla.Rahul is undermining Pearl’s dignity: RijijuNDA speakers continued to attack even as members of the Bharat Bloc justified action against the speaker and accused him of abusing the opposition at the behest of the government. While DMK’s TR Balu called him a “gentleman” who suspended many opposition MPs, TMC’s Mahua Maitra called the proposal a divine retribution for the Speaker for “wrongfully” expelling him in 2023. His karma has caught up with him, he said. Arvind Sawant of the Shiv Sena (UBT) said Birla was under pressure to act against the opposition.Rijiju accused Rahul of undermining the dignity of Parliament with his “misdeeds”. He tried to hug the Prime Minister by force. “What kind of LoP does it?” asked the minister.Other speakers on the treasury bench, including JDU’s Rajeev Ranjan, Shiv Sena’s Srikanth Shinde and TDP’s Lavu Srikrishna Devrayalu, pointed to Rahul’s frequent absence from key debates in the House and accused him of undermining the national interest by questioning the withdrawal of the armed forces. Shinde called him a “leader of leisure, not an opposition leader”. NDA MPs praised Birla for giving opportunities to first-time MPs and helping the Lok Sabha register record productivity during his tenure.Rijiju’s claim about unrest in opposition ranks over the motion against the Speaker came in the backdrop of the TMC reversing its earlier stand as the Congress fumed over its move to remove CEC Gyanesh Kumar, who had gone ahead with the voter list SIR to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.He said that Priyanka Gandhi would have been a better choice to lead the Congress, leading to protests by Congress MPs. Rijiju contradicted the Congress’ view of the Speaker by saying that the opposition had decided not to move a no-confidence motion against the then Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, even when he had used bribery to gain Congress majority in 2008, stopping the telecast of the proceedings.Congress members interrupted the minister when he referred to the LoP meeting with the Chinese ambassador in 2017 when the armies of the two countries were engaged in a tense standoff at Doklam.Union Minister Rajeev Ranjan (Lalan) Singh said that the opposition is relentlessly disrupting the functioning of the House, given the fact that Rs 1.9 crore is spent for every hour Parliament runs and Rs 9 crore for every day of the session. “These people don’t let it go, whose money is being wasted, it’s taxpayers’ money they are wasting,” the JDU leader said.Referring to Mahua Maitra’s comments that the Speaker silenced the voices of the opposition, Lalan Singh said that when Mamata was the only MP from her party, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee did not allow her to speak. Mamata was then part of the NDA, yet the saffron alliance did not move a no-confidence motion against the Speaker.
