New Delhi: Slamming the treasury benches in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday, Trinamool Congress MP Jawahar Sircar asked the government who has authorised it to sell the family silver.
Participating in the debate on the Motion of Thanks, he said that the country has never gone through such a bad patch and the flowery language does not mean anything much to those who go hungry.
Speaking on unemployment, he said that over 14 crore people have been pushed into poverty in the last two years whereas 10 crore were lifted out of poverty in ten years from 2006. “25 airports will be handed over on lease period after extracting whatever it is there. Who has authorised you to sell public assets. Six airports were privatised to a friend, procedures were suited for him” Sircar said.
He alleged that the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC)’s worth is Rs 40 lakh crore and it is being sold off to American insurance companies. “We will not forget the massive deaths that happened despite all the drumbeating during the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said. “Our civilisation is 5,500 years old, for 5,000 years Indians coalesced and came together, do not try to change that. The officers do not want to serve ar the Centre, can you get the message, they do not want to work with you, force doesn’t always work,” Sircar said.
Talking about the Central Vista project in Delhi, The TMC lawmaker charged that it was an arrogant display of hubris. They spent Rs 600 crores to redo the Rajpath by putting new lamps and are going to dismantle the National Museum, Vigyan Bhavan, National Archives of India to bring up six buildings, he alleges, adding that Pegasus is the greatest example of how this has become a surveillance state.
Joining the debate, BJD MP Sasmit Patra alleged that Odisha is not getting its dues and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik wrote to the government three times on the issue of the PM Awas Yojana portal. “This portal probably opens for those states that the government wants to favour,” he charged.
BJP lawmaker Kamakhya Prasad Tasa while participating in the debate said that PM Modi has shown huge courage working even during the time of COVID-19. Referring to the recently launched rail line Manipur, he spoke about the improved security status of states in the NorthEast region. “You (to Congress) are responsible for extremism in the NorthEast. Earlier people from Assam were not able to visit Manipur or Nagaland, PM Modi has gone there so many times.”
He said that the people of the NorthEast were earlier treated badly and were considered as outsiders, now the situation in the entire region has changed.
“In Assam, minority areas do not vote for us, but development has reached those panchayats also, we never cancelled the ration card of any minority,” Tasa said. “No poor person is upset because of demonetisation, only those who had black money were troubled by it,” Tasa claimed.
The debate on the Motion of Thanks on the President’s speech will resume on Friday.
(IANS)
