Congress trashes government claims of 'successful' budget session

Accuses Govt of using "brute majority to bulldoze legislation"

A day after the Narendra Modi-led government claimed that the just-concluded Budget session was the most productive in the past 15 years, the Congress party lashed out at it, saying the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was using its “brute majority to bulldoze legislation”. Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday said, “The government has made standing committees and Parliament scrutiny of Bills irrelevant. This is undemocratic behaviour,” he said.

Kharge said since the government was clearly “anti-people”, it was left to the Congress and to other opposition parties to highlight people-centric and farmer-friendly issues such as farmer suicides, agrarian distress, harassment of homebuyers by builders and Net neutrality.

Kharge said of a total of 55 Bills, only five or six have been referred to standing committees. Emphasising the importance of parliamentary committees he said, being low on numbers, the Congress with its 44 MPs and the other opposition parties with fewer numbers could not deliberate on a Bill in the few minutes that were allotted to them. Parliamentary committees are the forums in which true discussions could take place.

Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said the strategy of the government was to “use their numbers and bulldoze” Bills in the Lok Sabha and change Bills that are not otherwise money Bills such as black money Bill to money Bills, so that the Rajya Sabha, where the government does not enjoy a majority, has no say in it.

Azad said, “The crucial difference between the Congress and the BJP is that when in power or out of power, the Congress has been consistent in its stand, unlike the BJP which has on every issue be it the Goods and Services Tax Bill, insurance Bill, Land Boundary agreement and FDI opposed it when in opposition and then changed its stand and championed it now in power. The BJP is double faced.”

Asserting that the Congress and Opposition had succeeded in getting certain crucial bills like the Real Estate bill, the Land Acquisition bill, the constitutional amendment to the GST sent to parliamentary committees for scrutiny Azad claimed "By now, the number of opposition parties including those which are not in the opposition, has swelled... They are not with government on the land bill." Azad said 14 Opposition parties had joined Congress President Sonia Gandhi in marching to Rashtrapati Bhavan in opposing the NDA's Land bill. He was confident that more parties would swell their ranks.