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Following three days of acrimonious debate over preserving the dignity of BR Ambedkar, the winter session will most likely end on a bitter note with Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi in focus
Two BJP MPs were hospitalised, following which Delhi Police registered an FIR against Congress MP Rahul Gandhi in connection with the scuffle in Parliament. (Image: PTI)
It all started with a promise of peace from both the ruling and opposition sides, but with a day left for the winter session to end, unprecedented scenes of unruliness were witnessed with rival MPs screaming at and shoving each other on Thursday.
There was much action during the winter session this time – from ‘One Nation One Election’ Bill and a now-dismissed impeachment motion against Rajya Sabha chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar to a fiery first speech by Wayanad’s new MP Priyanka Gandhi to Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s controversial speech on the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution.
Following three days of acrimonious debate inside the House over preserving the dignity of BR Ambedkar, the winter session will most likely culminate on a bitter note with Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi as the focal point.
Here’s a recap:
PARLIAMENT SCUFFLE, FIR AGAINST RAHUL GANDHI
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi now faces an FIR in connection with the scuffle in Parliament, after two BJP MPs were hospitalised on Thursday (December 19). A woman MP also accused him of “misbehaviour”. Balasore MP Pratap Sarangi, 69, had to get stitches in the temple while his colleague Mukesh Rajput was also injured in the head.
Tempers and voices rose as BJP and opposition MPs marched towards each other over Amit Shah’s comments on BR Ambedkar. Trouble broke out minutes before both Houses were to convene at 11 am as both sides were protesting at the steps of Parliament’s ‘Makar Dwar’, an entrance and exit reserved for lawmakers.
The BJP MPs claimed that Rahul Gandhi tried to push his way through the middle of the stairs where they were standing, ignoring a side passage, and caused injuries in the ensuing jostling. However, some opposition MPs claimed that the BJP members refused to give way to Gandhi who was headed to the Lok Sabha to attend the House proceedings.
Both Houses witnessed massive uproar amid ‘Jai Bhim’ chants from both sides and were adjourned without witnessing any transaction. Congress MPs met Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and submitted a complaint against the BJP MPs.
Both the BJP and Congress held pressers, squarely putting the blame on each other for the fracas. “Rahul Gandhi does not deserve to hold the post of the Leader of Opposition,” said Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, while Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said he was pushed so violently that he lost his balance and sat down.
THE AMBEDKAR CONTROVERSY
A massive political row erupted on December 18 as the Congress and other opposition parties launched an all-out attack on Amit Shah for his remarks on BR Ambedkar and demanded his sacking, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top BJP leaders rallied to his defence and said he has exposed the “anti-Ambedkar” stand of the Congress.
“Baba Saheb is the architect of the Constitution, a great man who gave direction to the country. The country will not tolerate his insult or the insult to the Constitution framed by him. Home Minister should apologize!” Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said. “They are against the Constitution. They had said earlier that we will change the Constitution. They are against Ambedkar and his ideology. Their whole work is to finish off Ambedkar’s contribution and the Constitution. The whole country knows.”
As opposition parties unitedly protested against him and stalled both houses of Parliament, alleging that his remarks had insulted Ambedkar and demanding his apology, Shah said the Congress had distorted his comments under a malicious campaign after the discussion on the Constitution “established” that the opposition party was against Ambedkar and reservation.
“Abhi ek fashion ho gaya hai – Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar. Itna naam agar bhagwan ka lete to saat janmon tak swarg mil jata (It has become a fashion to say Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar’. If they had taken God’s name so many times, they would have got a place in heaven),” he said in the Rajya Sabha during the debate on the Constitution.
Modi, too, hit out at the Congress saying its “rotten ecosystem” and “malicious lies” cannot hide its misdeeds and said the home minister had exposed the opposition party’s “dark history of insulting” Ambedkar.
“They are clearly stung and stunned by the facts he presented, 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 the Congress, Trinamool Congress, AAP, RJD, SP, Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Left protested against Shah inside Parliament and outside. Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien submitted a notice to move a privilege motion against him, followed by Congress president and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge.
“I hereby give a notice of question of privilege against Shri Amit Shah, Minister of Home Affairs under Rule 188 of Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Council of States (Rajya Sabha),” Kharge said in his notice.
The uproar in Parliament also spilled onto the streets of the national capital and other states like Maharashtra, Bihar and Tamil Nadu where various parties held protests. In Delhi, AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal led a protest with hundreds of supporters outside the BJP chanting slogans of ‘Amit Shah maafi maango, Amit Shah sharm karo’.
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Tamil Nadu counterpart MK Stalin, all condemned Shah’s remarks. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and former Bihar deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav also slammed the home minister for his words.
‘ONE NATION, ONE ELECTION’
The two ‘one nation, one election’ (ONOE) bills, including one requiring an amendment in the Constitution, lay down the mechanism to hold simultaneous polls and were introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 17 after a fiery debate.
Opposition parties dubbed the draft laws – a Constitution amendment bill and an ordinary bill – as an attack on the federal structure, a charge rejected by the central government. Speaking to reporters on Parliament premises, Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi had termed the bills “anti-constitutional”. “It is against the federalism of our nation. We are opposing the bill,” she had said.
The BJP and its allies such as the TDP, JD(U) and Shiv Sena have stoutly defended the bills, saying frequent elections are an obstruction to development programmes and simultaneous polling will boost them by cutting down on election expenditure.
Priyanka, along with former Union ministers Anurag Thakur and PP Chaudhary from the BJP, are set to be among the 21 Lok Sabha MPs, who will be part of the joint parliamentary committee (JPC) that will scrutinise two bills on simultaneous polls.
A total of 21 MPs will be part of the committee. The Rajya Sabha will name its 10 members in a separate communication. Among members proposed to be on the committee, 14 are from the BJP-led NDA, including 10 from the BJP.
According to official sources, BJP MP Bhartruhari Mahtab is being considered to head the JPC. With the BJP set to get the position of the chair for the crucial panel, they said Mahtab’s parliamentary experience may weigh in his favour. He is a seven-time Lok Sabha member from Odisha and is currently heading the standing committee for the finance ministry.
DEBATE ON CONSTITUTION
Amid the new Rahul Gandhi controversy and Amit Shah’s alleged insult of BR Ambedkar, the Parliament debate on the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution seems to have taken on a life of its own. But, it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who set the tone in a searing attack on the Nehru-Gandhi family.
On December 14, Modi alleged generations of the family had assaulted the Constitution leaving its spirit in a “bloodied state”. Responding to the two-day debate on the ‘Glorious Journey of 75 Years of the Constitution of India’, he said first PM Jawaharlal Nehru had “tasted blood” by amending the Constitution and his successive generations kept assaulting the guiding document time and again, leaving it in tatters.
“They tasted blood by changing the Constitution and they kept assaulting it. They had tasted blood. They left the spirit of the Constitution in a bloodied state. The seed that was sown by the first prime minister was nurtured by another prime minister Indira Gandhi,” he said. “When Rajiv Gandhi became the prime minister, he continued to attack the Constitution.”
He further took potshots at Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, while claiming that the Constitution was altered 75 times in 60 years of Congress tenure. He said Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency by misusing the Constitution and even clipped the wings of courts through constitutional amendments to capture the judiciary.
“The Constitution was torn apart when it was completing 25 years. The Emergency was imposed in 1975, all constitutional rights were snatched, and the country was turned into a jail. All the rights of the citizens were taken away and there was a clampdown on the media,” he said. “The Congress cannot wipe off this sin. Whenever democracy will be discussed across the world, this sin of the Congress will be remembered.”
Before his remarks on Ambedkar, Shah more or less made similar observations while concluding the debate. On December 17, during his speech, he said the Congress treated the Constitution as the “private fiefdom” of one family and “played fraud” with Parliament.
“In the last 75 years, the Congress played fraud in the name of the Constitution… They (Nehru-Gandhi family) considered not just the party as their personal property, but also treated the Constitution as their ‘private fiefdom’,” he alleged, adding that it amended the document several times to remain in power.
PRIYANKA GANDHI VADRA: NEW MP ON THE BLOCK
It looks like Wayanad’s MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had an interesting Parliament run – be it her fiery first speech, which set tongues wagging about how she could be a “big threat” to brother Rahul’s political career, or her statement-making bags in support of Palestine and Bangladesh. She even called Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech for the debate on Constitution in Lok Sabha boring and like sitting through a “double period of mathematics” in school.
During her 32-minute speech in Hindi, Priyanka said Modi has not understood that the Constitution is “Bharat ka Samvidhan” not “Sangh ka Vidhan”. Launching a blistering attack against the BJP, she said had it not been for the Lok Sabha poll results, the ruling party would have started changing the Constitution.
She was combative yet restrained, never raising her voice, as she raised the opposition’s key planks. These included the BJP’s alleged attempts to change the Constitution, atrocities on women, incidents of violence in Sambhal and Manipur, and the demand for a nationwide caste census.
Slamming the BJP over its alleged divisive politics, the Congress MP said seeds of suspicion and hatred are being sown where the Constitution gave a protective shield of unity. “The suraksha kavach of unity is being broken. The prime minister touches his forehead to the Constitution but when there are cries for justice from Sambhal, Hathras and Manipur, there is not a wrinkle on his forehead,” she said.
When it came to her making bold statements, she did so twice by carrying bags in support of Palestine and Bangladesh to Parliament. When she was criticised for her “Palestine bag”, she called it “typical patriarchy” and asserted that no one will decide what she wears.
Not only has she previously made her views on the Gaza war public by severely criticising the Benjamin Netanyahu-led Israel, in Parliament, she raised the issue of reported attacks on minorities in Bangladesh.
(With PTI inputs)
