Having embarrassed the NDA government in 2015 during the Budget Session by getting an amendment to the motion of thanks to the President’s address passed, the Left parties with support from the main O
Having embarrassed the NDA government in 2015 during the Budget Session by getting an amendment to the motion of thanks to the President’s address passed, the Left parties with support from the main Opposition Congress, are preparing to again put the Modi dispensation on test by moving a slew of amendments to the motion of thanks to the President’s address on March 1 in the Rajya Sabha. The ruling BJP is in a minority in the Upper House.
According to sources aware of the development, the Left parties with help from the Congress, plan to move amendments in the President’s address, by inserting a “regret” that it has failed to mention burning concerns which have engulfed the nation like the JNU row and the prevailing situation in other educational institutions like Hyderabad Central University.
Another amendment would be that the President’s address also overlooked the rising communal polarisation in the country, sources informed.
If the Left and the Congress manage to get the amendments passed in the Upper House, like in 2015, it may be for the first time in the nation’s parliamentary history that the Opposition could succeed in enforcing amendments in the President’s address twice during a single tenure of a government.
CPI Rajya Sabha MP D. Raja confirmed to this newspaper that the Left parties have decided to move the amendments to the motion of thanks on the President’s address. These amendments would be moved in the Rajya Sabha on March 1, a day after the Budget is presented in Parliament, he added. Other significant amendments which they plan to move, include the President’s address failing to mention the deep economic stress being faced by the government, communal polarisation and deep divide that has set in within one year, the terror attacks (on Pathankot airbase), and a wayward foreign policy.
Last year in March, during the previous Budget session, the Left had managed to get amendments in the motion of thanks to President’s address, passed in Rajya Sabha. Those amendments had said that the House regrets that the Government has not taken steps to prevent corruption and has failed to bring black money.
The amendments scheduled for March 1, 2016 are aimed to ‘embarrass’ the Government and put it on the backfoot after the Left has displayed an ‘’aggressive’’ posture in the Upper House since the onset of the Budget session.
The Opposition parties including the Left are said to have held parleys amongst themselves, where they are learnt to be of the view that the Union HRD minister Smriti Irani must be questioned regarding the crackdown on the JNU campus as well as her response in Parliament on the alleged suicide of a student in Hyderabad Central University.
