Modi govt should grant special category status to Andhra: T K Rangarajan

He said if the PM didn't deliver on the promise he made before the god he believed in, how can the people of India believe in the PM

God’s own debate
 

During a discussion in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, Communist Party of India (Marxist) member T K Rangarajan reminded the House that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised special category status to Andhra Pradesh 

in the temple town of Tirupati in 2014. Rangarajan said as a Marxist he didn’t believe in God, but if the PM didn’t deliver on the promise he made before the god he believed in, how can the people of India believe in the PM. The Modi government, Rangarajan said, should grant special category status for god’s sake, if for nothing else. Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu observed he was happy that for the PM’s sake Rangarajan had started believing in god.

Opposition camaraderie

The Narendra Modi government won Friday’s no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha, but it is the Opposition members who have discovered a spring in their strides as they believe they succeeded in putting the government on the mat on several issues. On Tuesday, the camaraderie continued in the Rajya Sabha when nearly all Opposition parties forced the government to postpone introduction of a Bill to amend the Motor Vehicles Act. Even regional parties like the AIADMK and YSR Congress Party, perceived to be close to the government, and Biju Janata Dal, that tries to be equidistant from both the government and the Opposition, indicated they would oppose the amendment. When the Rajya Sabha took up a discussion on special category status for Andhra Pradesh, Opposition members offered to have some of the time allocated to their respective parties to be added to that of the Telugu Desam Party, to enable its members to speak at length on the issue.

Out of tune Supriyo 

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s West Bengal core committee met in Asansol, its stronghold in West Bengal from where current MoS for heavy industries Babul Supriyo won his ticket to the Lok Sabha in 2014, to discuss its strategy for the state in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The meet went ahead minus Supriyo, a member of the core committee, leading to much bickering within the BJP. Supriyo, who is in New Delhi attending the Lok Sabha proceedings, claimed he didn’t know anything about the crucial meeting; in any case, it would not have been possible for him to attend as Parliament was in session. Dilip Ghosh, the party’s president for West Bengal and a member of the state Assembly, claimed he took special permission from the Speaker to attend the meet even though the Assembly was in session. The party members aver the episode might send out a wrong signal ahead of the 2019 election.