Opposition calls President’s speech ‘predictable, exercise in self-denial’

The Congress-led Opposition described President Droupadi Murmu’s address to the joint sitting of Parliament on Friday as “predictable” and “an exercise in self-denial”.

Advertisement

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, while reacting to the President’s address, said, “It was a very predictable speech, unfortunately. No real surprises in what the President said. It’s her job to praise her own government and she did that. But we are concerned about what was omitted from her speech. The things the government has failed to accomplish, matters at which the government is not doing very well. The situation of the economy today... the fact that the common man, the middle class are hurting today. The fact that unemployment is so high, even educated youth don’t have jobs. There was no acknowledgement in the President’s speech about what the ordinary citizen of India is experiencing every day.”

Communist Party of India (CPI) Rajya Sabha member P Sandosh Kumar said, “The President’s address was a glaring exercise in denial, presenting a highly sanitised version of India’s current state while failing to address the pressing issues that have been wreaking havoc on the lives of ordinary citizens.” These glaring omissions reflected the government’s wilful ignorance of the reality of millions of citizens, he further said.

Congress general secretary KC Venugopal described her speech as “political”. “The President was made to deliver a political speech. Nothing is new. Everything is only complete lie and ‘jumla’,” he said.

RJD’s Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha, while reacting on the President’s address, said, “It was the President’s speech... I would just like to say that we should start a new tradition. The President should be able to speak about the pain she is experiencing and not the rhetorical things that the government has written. The President knows about the issues of unemployment, how low is the social harmony, Manipur is burning today also. There are so many things... but only painting a rosy picture... it is painful.”