 |
Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi was the target of opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Lok Sabha yesterday during the debate on the Lokpal bill, with the leader of the opposition Sushma Swaraj saying he had watered down the statesmanship shown by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to break the logjam with Anna Hazare.
She also charged that Gandhi’s five-page statement in the Lok Sabha during question hour on Friday was unprecedented, as he was making the Congress’s stand on the Lokpal issue clear and was thereby overruling the government’s efforts at reaching out to Hazare, who had galvanised the nation on the anti-graft plank.
“Rahul Gandhi poured cold water on the statesmanship and initiative by the prime minister,” said Swaraj, who initiated a debate on the Lokpal issue after a statement by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
Amidst protests from the ruling party MPs, she also charged that Gandhi was allowed to make a long speech during the question hour, which was contrary to the norms.
“Zero hour is meant to raise an issue, not to deliver sermons. Why were norms relaxed for Rahul,” she asked.
Speaker Meira Kumar chose not to comment.
Gandhi had suggested during his 15-minute address that the Lokpal should be a constitutional body like the Election Commission and had also indirectly hit out at Hazare, saying individuals should not be allowed to dictate in a democracy.
“Zero hour allows three minutes to raise an issue, Rahul took 15 minutes,” Swaraj said.
Taking potshots at the Congress, Swaraj said: “The PM speaks rarely, and even when he does, no one listens (to him).”
She said Hazare’s anti-graft campaign had brought the issue of Lokpal to the people and the massive support it garnered indicated that people’s emotions had galvanised against the “innumerable scams” and people were “fed up” of increasing corruption.
She said people’s emotions have reached a boiling point. “The reason are the scams that have come up in the last two years... one after another, with numbers that baffle the mind,” she said, pointing out that all the charges of corruption were based on the constitutional body Comptroller and Auditor General’s reports and not on allegations of the opposition parties.
On top of this, she said, the government “added fuel to fire” by introducing a defective Lokpal bill in parliament.
“The government’s bill has added fuel to fire... it lacked teeth. People got suspicious,” she said.
Declaring her party’s support to all three issues raised by Hazare - including lower bureaucracy under the purview of Lokpal, Lokyuktas in states and grievances redressal at the local level - Swaraj said on the issue of judicial accountability, the BJP was in favour of setting up a commission to investigate and check corruption in the judiciary.
On keeping the prime minister out of the Lokpal bill’s purview, she said it was not possible now, especially at a time when incriminated ministers have pointed to his alleged role in carrying out the actions they have been accused of.