The President’s address to the Parliament and the subsequent discussions on the Motion of Thanks on the President’s address are constitutionally mandated procedures. As an citizen, we would expect the president’s address to outline the government’s broad goals for the upcoming year and for the opposition to highlight any shortcomings in the same during the discussions that follow. But what happened this year?
President Droupadi Murmu addressed both the houses of the parliament on January 31, 2023. In her address of over 6,000 words, after general words of government, India and country, the word ‘today’ occurred the most. The speech, in its very initial section laid down a vision for India at 2047 but soon changed its course to focus on the achievements of the past 9 years of NDA rule. I could find just one reference to future plans or even continuity of the existing plans. I found this extremely disturbing and the leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge also pointed this out in this speech, but did not dwell more on this aspect.
However, the president’s address did point out around 50 achievements of the government and painted a very rosy picture of the general state of affairs in the country. What should the opposition have done? They must have pointed out the shortcomings of these claims, drawn attention to issues that have not been addressed so far etc. But what did the they do? I listened to the speeches made by Rahul Gandhi in Lok Sabha and Mallikarjun Kharge in the Rajya Sabha. Rahul made no reference to the president’s address or the claims therein. His entire speech centred only on Adani. Kharge made passing observations on unemployment but even linked the same to the Adani fiasco. Agreed Adani is a burning issue and the opposition want to be strong on its demand for JPC or judicial enquiry.
But, is it right for the opposition to completely hijack the supposed discussions on government policies spread across multiple sectors of economy and society into a focused attack on Adani? How can any single issue be more important than the widespread national interest? Though Kharge technically holds higher authority, Rahul’s speech in the parliament will garner public attention and national coverage. Shouldn’t he have used it to highlight the key policy failures of this government. Heck, he could have at least fact checked some of the claims made in the president’s address, thereby highlighting their shortcomings. For example, it’s a oft repeated narrative by the Modi government that only 74 airports were in India till 2014. This has been debunked multiple times. AAI owned 125 airports as on 2014 of which 94 were operational.
So in effect, during the discussions on the presidents address,
– the opposition launched a directed attack on the government focussing on a single issue thereby ignoring wider public issues.
– government responded through the prime minister’s address to each of the houses, where he again repeated the key points from the presidents address, with no major indications on future plans for the upcoming year.
Both of these approaches concern me with the actions of opposition concerning me more.
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