The government on Wednesday blamed Congress for the poor productivity of the winter session with the Parliamentary affairs minister M Venkaiah Naidu claiming the main opposition party was still smarting after its defeat in the Lok Sabha polls.
Naidu said the NDA government had committed no wrong while the scam-tainted UPA government had seen coal, 2G, CWG and other scams. This has meant that the opposition has no excuses and is needlessly disrupting the House, he said.
Attacking Congress for using its numbers to “paralyze” Rajya Sabha, Naidu on Wednesday backed the “campaign” for “redefining” its role as the two Houses are “pulling in different directions.”
Naidu also accused Congress of “cheating the people” by not allowing the government to do “what is expected of it”. “This session has been a victim of a strategy conceived before its commencement which was to see that Parliament was paralyzed come what may ,” he said. “Since the monsoon session, which was a near wash out, Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha have been pulling in different directions, which is a matter of serious concern.
“This only justifies the campaign … that has already begun in some degree for redefining the role of the Rajya Sabha… The country is disappointed at the manner in which Parliament has functioned,” Naidu said.
The Modi government’s legislative agenda has suffered a serious setback due to lack of support from the numerically stronger Congress-led opposition in the House. This had prompted finance minister Arun Jaitley to raise the question of how an “unelected” House could overrule the mandate of the “elected” House.
Congress was looking for lame excuses to paralyze Parliament on a day-to-day basis, he alleged, accusing it of being “intolerant” towards the mandate of the people.