The united opposition in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday forced an amendment — on the issue of black money — to the Motion of Thanks to the President’s address to Parliament, inflicting embarrassment on the government.
Only thrice before has the Rajya Sabha passed amendments to the Motion of Thanks to the President’s address. The government is in a minority in the Upper House.
Members in both Houses move hundreds of amendments to the Motion of Thanks every year, but they are by convention withdrawn after discussion. The President’s speech to the two Houses on the first day of the session is approved by the union Cabinet, and is the government’s own account of itself.
While the CPM’s Sitaram Yechury and P Rajeeve withdrew over 80 of their amendments, they insisted on a vote on one related to the government’s action on black money.
The amendment said that the words “but regret that there is no mention in the (President’s) Address about the failure of the government to curb the high-level corruption and to bring back black money” be added at the end of the Motion of Thanks.
The amendment got the support of the entire opposition, and received 118 votes. Fifty-seven members voted against the amendment.
In Lok Sabha, where the government has a comfortable majority, Saugata Roy of the Trinamool Congress moved an amendment to the Motion of Thanks, which was defeated by 203 votes to 61. Four members abstained.
Yechury said he would not have pressed for the vote had Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who delivered a long speech earlier, not prevented him from speaking, and heard him out.
“In the normal course, I would not have pressed for it. I would have withdrawn it. But it seems they (the treasury benches) want a fight. So let there be a fight,” Yechury said.
While winding up discussions on the Motion of Thanks, the Prime Minister picked out the Left and its “imported” ideology for criticism.
“The (ideological) ancestors of Sitaramji used to tell people that when a vehicle moves, it is not oil that gets burnt. It is your blood that burns… We have heard this dialogue for many years,” Modi said in the initial portion of the speech that lasted over an hour.
He rebutted arguments made by Congress deputy leader Anand Sharma and other speakers, before returning to attack the Left parties, blaming them for hampering the progress of West Bengal.
“In 30 years, West Bengal, which once used to be the capital of industrial activity… was totally ruined. Industrial output has come down from 10 per cent in 1980 to 4 per cent… agricultural growth in the state was 17.3 per cent in 1976-77, it came down to 7.8 per cent in 2001-07. In 2007, the national sample survey found that starvation was the most in Bengal,” continued…
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