Constitutional functionaries, who are responsible for protecting Opposition members, have become a part of partisan politics, and there are attempts to convert Parliament into a platform for the ruling party, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, said in his opening remarks to the Congress Working Committee (CWC) on Thursday.
Though Mr. Kharge didn’t name anyone, it was a clear reference to Rajya Sabha Chairperson Jagdeep Dhankhar and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, both of whom handed out a record number of suspensions in the winter session of Parliament.
They had also questioned Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s filming Trinamool Congress member Kalyan Banerjee’s mimicry of Mr. Dhankhar.
“The biggest challenge is that those who are in Constitutional positions, responsible for protecting Opposition members, have now become part of partisan politics. Caste, region and profession are being used as shields to do politics. They have failed to fulfil their constitutional obligations,” Mr. Kharge said.
The Congress party president also slammed the government for passing important Bills in the absence of Opposition members, breaking with parliamentary conventions. “There is a conspiracy to convert Parliament into a platform for the ruling party,” he said, while noting that the ongoing winter session has the highest number of suspensions of MPs in the Indian Parliament’s history.
This is the first meeting of the Congress’ highest decision-making body after the party’s poor showing in the recently concluded Assembly elections. Noting that the outcomes of the elections in five States, barring Telangana, were “disappointing”, Mr. Kharge informed his party colleagues that a preliminary analysis of the results and the reasons for the party’s performance had been identified.
“Despite the results, there are some positive indicators, such as the vote share in these States, which give us a definite hope that given due attention, we can certainly turn things around. We have learnt valuable lessons from the mistakes we have made and are committed to not repeating them,” he said.
