Opposition lying over reasons for Rajya Sabha stalemate: Govt

Tribune News Service

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New Delhi, December 24

The government on Friday attacked the Opposition, especially ‘senior members’ of the Congress over their version of the stalemate in the Rajya Sabha following the suspension of 12 members of the Opposition.

“It it is both astonishing and saddening that members of the Opposition, especially senior members of the Congress Party, have deviated from the well-known truth about what transpired in the recently concluded session, in the Rajya Sabha,” said Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhlad Joshi in a statement.

The Opposition appeared committed to hampering the running of the House, he noted while pointing out that the Opposition has “made a kind of practice” to bring to the sittings of the House.

In fact the Opposition appears to use every means to not let the House proceedings carry on. It was painful, when some members of the opposition reduced the temple of democracy to a theatre of street fight, he said in a statement carried on the government’s official website.

The Rajya Sabha Chairman Venkaiah Naidu, “deeply pained”, reached out to the Opposition to break the stalemate.

But the Opposition came back in multiple voices which were unclear and contradictory at the same time.

“Duplicitousness was obvious beneath some weak conciliatory overtures. When the Chairman reached out in a concrete manner, the response proved that the intention beneath the conciliatory talk was that the House not run,” he alleged.

In this respect, he accused senior Congress leaders such as Jairam Ramesh of trying to “somehow create the opposite narrative”, by casting aspersions on the functioning of a Constitutional authority.

“We would urge the members of the Opposition to accept their role of opposition with grace, participate in the smooth functioning of our democracy and not make factually and morally incorrect statements,” he said.