One family is repeatedly disrupting Parliament to take revenge for its loss in the Lok Sabha elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday, taking a veiled dig at the Gandhis, the first family of the main opposition party, the Congress.
Without naming them, the Prime Minister said “one family” was responsible for the disruptions in Parliament that have stalled important legislative business and reforms and said he wondered if they were exacting “revenge” for their defeat in the national election of 2014.
“There are leaders in opposition parties who want Parliament to run even as they oppose me, but one family is too rigid to allow the Rajya Sabha to function,” PM Modi said, asking Assam to give his BJP a chance in elections due by April.
“But one family is so rigid that they do not allow the Rajya Sabha to function and the nation’s agenda of development to be taken forward because the people of the country have defeated them.”
Little business has been possible in the last monsoon and winter sessions of Parliament, where key economic reform bills such as a national goods and services tax and proposals for friendlier labour laws have remained stuck in the face of opposition protests.
Replying to PM Modi, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that his party would not let Prime Minister Narendra Modi run a government that acts only in the interests of three or four industrialists.
“We will put pressure on the government so that they pay attention to poor people and the farmers,” the Congress VP said.
Rahul accused PM Modi of “making excuses” for not being able to deliver on his promises.
“PM has been making excuses for last one-and-a-half years for not being able to deliver. The job of the Prime Minister is to run the country and not make excuses,” he said.
“Even big industrialists are crying before us as the NDA government is not performing,” Rahul said.
