From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: Both the Houses of Parliament were adjourned for the third consecutive day on Monday on the Adani issue in the repeat of Thursday and Friday as they were adjourned first till 2 PM and then for the day.
The joint Opposition insisted on a Joint Parliamentary Committee or first discussion on the Adani issue, unacceptable to the government. Rajya Sabha chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar adjourned for the day, saying he can’t run the House in the noisy scenes.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi made an unsuccessful attempt in the Lok Sabha to appeal to the Opposition to the tradition of Parliament discussing the motion of thanks to the President for his address and then other issues can be taken up. The Opposition, however, did not relent and so presiding officer Kirit Solanki adjourned the House for Tuesday.
With no scope of the motion of thanks, the government is contemplating to let Prime Minister Modi respond to it in both the Houses on Tuesday and then proceed to discuss the budget in the remainder period of four days of the first part of the budget session.
On Monday, the Congress workers across the country held protests at the offices of the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) and the State Bank of India (SBI) on the loans given by them as also by other banks to Adanis.
SONIA LASHES OUT: Meanwhile, former Congress President Sonia Gandhi flayed the government for deep economic distress and widespreaddisappointment about the direction in which India is headed, with the poor or middle class, rural or urban, India are being punished by the triple menace of price rise unemployment and falling incomes.
She wrote that the 2023-24 budget not only fails to address these critical challenges, but also worsen them by slashing allocations meant for the poor and the vulnerable. She noted how the government has acted against the Rights-based laws of the UPA era to empower the citizens on education, food, work and nutrition.
“The Prime Minister makes no secret of his dislike for all this talk of right. With this budget, he has now rolled back funding to lows not seen in over a decade. As expected, there has been a total silence from the Prime Minister on whih this attack on social schemes…Reading between the lines, we understand that the rationale is to fund capital expenditure, which the budget has sharply raised.”
Sonia didn’t spare the Prime Minister for his policy to benefit his few rich friends at the expense of poor and middle-class Indians that led to continuous disasters, from demonetisation to a badly designed GST hurting small businesses to the failed attempt to bring about the three farm laws and the subsequent neglect of agriculture.
