Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on May 28 said Parliament is the voice of the people but the Prime Minister is treating the inauguration of the new Parliament building like "coronation".
The attack came soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the new Parliament building.
"Parliament is the voice of the people! The Prime Minister is treating the inauguration of the Parliament House as coronation," Mr. Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi.
AICC general secretary, Organisation, K.C. Venugopal also tweeted, saying, "At the foundation stone laying ceremony of the new Parliament building, then Hon’ble President Sh. Ramnath Kovind was kept away from the ceremony. At its inauguration, President Droupadi Murmu has been sidelined."
"It is the upper caste, anti-backward mindset of the RSS because of which they are denied the respect that their high constitutional office deserves. Their deliberate exclusion shows PM Modi will use them as tokens for his electoral politics, but will not allow them to be part of such significant and historic occasions," Mr. Venugopal said.
Attacking the PM, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said, “On this day, May 28th: Nehru, the person who did the most to nurture Parliamentary democracy in India, was cremated in 1964. Savarkar, the person whose ideological ecosystem led to the killing of Mahatma Gandhi, was born in 1883.” Mr. Ramesh also said that on this day President Droupadi Murmu — the first Adivasi to become President — is not allowed to fulfil her constitutional duties and inaugurate the new Parliament building.
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“A self-glorifying authoritarian Prime Minister with utter disdain for Parliamentary procedures, who rarely attends Parliament or engages in it, inaugurates the new Parliament building in 2023,” he said.
Mr. Ramesh said that fabrication of facts by “distorians” and the drum-beating of the media hits new lows in 2023.
The Congress and the BJP have been engaged in a war of words over the history of the Sengol that was installed in the new Parliament building on May 28 and the inauguration of the new Parliament being done by the Prime Minister.
Several Opposition parties have boycotted the event contending that the President and not the PM should inaugurate the new Parliament building.
