Cong mulls privilege motion against Modi

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 4

The Congress is contemplating a privilege motion against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Rajya Sabha for making false and misleading statements in the House yesterday.

Questioning the PM’s assertions that the UPA had copied the schemes conceived by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee led-NDA government, the Congress today said “nothing could be far from truth”.

“It is regrettable that the PM, inspired by his oratory, has taken liberty with the truth in the Rajya Sabha. The PM said the Congress had imitated many of NDA schemes. It is sad that the advisers of the head of government don’t feed him the right material. The PM’s claims are false and misleading and we will bring a motion of privilege against him if found legally admissible. We are examining the matter,” said Abhishek Singhvi, Congress spokesperson.

The Prime Minister yesterday while replying to the motion of thanks to the President’s address attacked the Congress for repackaging the ideas of Vajpayee-led NDA government. The Congress today came back to defend its position giving a point-by- point rebuttal to the five schemes the PM said the Sonia Gandhi-led outfit had copied from the NDA.

On the first —Multipurpose National Identification Card (Unique Identification Card now) — the Congress said the BJP had in its 1999 Lok Sabha manifesto and again in 2009 promised the said card and not delivered. “The first tranche of cards was handed over to the people in June 2007 when the Congress-led UPA was in power while the NDA in September 2003 had stated that it was still completing operationalising the project,” Singhvi said.

On the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the Congress acknowledged that though the phrase SSA was coined by Vajpayee, it was nothing but an extension of the District Primary Education Programme which was initiated in 1993 under the PV Narasimha Rao-led Congress government. “Vajpayeeji just renamed our programme while we later extended the scheme as the Right to Education Act,” the party asserted.

The Congress further wondered how the Prime Minister could compare the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana during the NDA times to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the world’s largest social security programme which guarantees employment by law.