Rahul, ministers slug it out in budget debate
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi criticized BJP govt, calling their policies a trap harming the country. He named individuals, faced backlash from Speaker.
Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said on Monday that the BJP government has created a Chakravyuh (a trap) which has three elements, the concentration of financial power, the use of institutions such as CBI, ED and the Income Tax department, and the political executive, and that together, they “have devastated this country” .
Arguing that the Union Budget for FY24-25 has “strengthened” this framework instead of providing relief to the people, he named six people controlling the Chakrayvuh, “(Prime Minister) Narendra Modi, (home minister) Amit Shah,” and four others who are non-members, including two industrialists.
After Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla cautioned him to not to mention the name of any person who is not a member of the House, Gandhi asked the presiding officer how he could refer to the two industrialists, forcing an interjection by parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju who accused Gandhi of disrespecting the speaker and being unaware of the rules of the House.
Gandhi’s reference to the names of non members was later expunged.
Referring to the Mahabharata, where Arjuna’s son Abhimanyu is killed by the Kauravas after luring him into a Chakravyuh, Gandhi said the youth, farmers, women, small and medium businesses now find themselves in a similar trap.
An aggressive Gandhi said that the middle class has abandoned the BJP after the Budget “stabbed them” by doing away with the indexation benefit for capital gains tax on real estate transactions and hiking the capital gains tax on equities. He also highlighted paper leaks (of tests for various admission exams) as one of the biggest problems in the country and pitched for caste census in a speech during which he had frequent run-ins with Birla and members of the treasury benches.
Upping the ante on his pet issue of low representation of people from SCs, STs, and OBCs in the higher bureaucracy, Gandhi tried to show a photo of the Halwa ceremony—a traditional ceremony marking the preparations of the budget documents— in the finance ministry and claimed, “In the country, there are 73% Dalit, Adivasi and OBCs. And they are the main strength of India. and the truth is they do not get enough space in business and in the government. I saw a picture of the Budget halwa. I could not see a single SC, ST or OBC officer. What is happening? Desh ka halwa baat raha hai but there is no SC, ST, OBC. I know 20 officers were behind the preparation of the Budget including one each from the minority (community) and OBC. But when they distributed the halwa of India, the two officers were not shown in the photo.”
The Speaker advised Gandhi to follow the rules of the House (which prohibit the use of props such as photographs).
Gandhi also commented on the Agniveer scheme for recruitment of people into the armed forces.
“For the first time, jawans of Indian army have been put in a Chakravyuha and it is called the Agniveer! You call yourself patriots but you don’t give pension for Agniveer,” Gandhi said. Defence minister Rajnath Singh said at the end of Gandhi’s speech that he wants to table all information related to the Agniveer scheme, accusing Gandhi of spreading misinformation.
Read more: ‘Read parliamentary rules’: Om Birla tells Rahul Gandhi in Lok Sabha
Opposition parties have targeted the government over the scheme which recruits personnel for four-year stints in the services, with 25% of them being retained after that. It is believed that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s sub-par performance in this summer’s Lok Sabha elections in some states was partly caused by angst over the scheme. There have been reports that the government is considering tweaking the scheme.
In his second major speech in the 18th Lok Sabha, the Leader of the Opposition claimed that the internship programme—which Congress leaders have said was borrowed from the proposed Apprenticeship law in the party’s manifesto--“is a joke” and said, “because you have destroyed the MSME sector, the people of India can’t get jobs. In Budget you spoke about internship. It might be a joke as 99% of the youth won’t benefit from it.”
Gandhi also spoke about the allocation to education in the budget, 2.5%, and claimed this was the lowest in 20 years. He said a big problem in education was paper leaks and said that over the past 10 years, there have been 70 major leaks. The finance minister has “not said a word on paper leak” in the budget, he said.
The Congress lawmaker from Rae Bareli said that the INDIA bloc of opposition parties expected the budget to make an announcement on the legal guarantee of support prices for crops, or MSPs. “We felt, if the government made a provision of MSP, the farmers could have come out of Chakravyuh. I want to assure that INDIA group will give legal guarantee for MSPs,” Gandhi said.
He also claimed that middle class had traditionally supported the PM but “in this budget, you stabbed the middle class both in the back and on the chest by removing the indexation (benefit for real estate) and hiking the capital gains tax. Middle class is going to leave you. Wherever you get chance, you create Chakravyuh. And we break it. Our government had given MGNREGA and loan waiver to allow famers come out of Chakravyuh.”
Gandhi also targeted two large business houses and said, “these two people control India’s infrastructure. They have airport, telecom, ports and now they are going to the railways. They have the monopoly.”
The LoP claimed that the INDIA alliance has “demolished” the PM’s confidence .
Union minister for IT, railways and I&B Ashwini Vaishnaw said: “In the provisions of our constitution, there is a leader of opposition, and in the parliamentary system, we have the honourable speaker. The two posts are such they help in strengthening the democracy. It is unfortunate that Rahul Gandhi, despite holding a constitutional post of the leader of opposition, uses such language and points fingers at the speaker, which is also constitutional post. Such action only weakens the constitution and the democracy. There is a context to it that lies in the past. Once Rahul Gandhi had torn an ordinance, which was brought by his own party, in public. Gandhi does not believe in uploading the dignity of the constitution,“ he said.
