A key aide of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday alleged that the proposed inauguration of the new Parliament building by Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be a breach of protocol “to show one individual as above the country, the Constitution and the legislature”.
The new building is scheduled to be inaugurated by PM Modi on Sunday.
Kumar’s JD(U) is among the nearly a score of parties opposed to the BJP, which have announced a boycott of the function. In a statement issued here, senior JD(U) leader and state minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary asserted that the inauguration of the new building “should be by none other than President Droupadi Murmu”.
Advertisement
Asserting that “as per the Constitution, it is the President who heads the country's legislature” the JD(U) leader dubbed the boycott of the function announced by opposition parties as “justified and inevitable”.
Chaudhary, widely regarded as the “troubleshooter” of Nitish Kumar in political as well as administrative matters, termed as “surprising” the conspicuous absence of the name of Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar from the inauguration invite.
“It is strange that though the Lok Sabha Speaker's name is there among the attendees of the function, the Vice President, who also happens to be chairman of the Rajya Sabha, has been kept out,” the JD(U) leader said.
Advertisement
“It appears that all protocols have been done away with to show one individual as above the country, the Constitution and the legislature. Clearly, this sad chapter is being added to the post-Independence journey of parliamentary system merely for the lionisation of one individual,” Chaudhary said without taking any name.
The JD(U) leader also scoffed at Sushil Kumar Modi, a senior BJP leader who is a member of the Rajya Sabha, for insisting that the inauguration of the new Parliament building was not without precedence.
He said that an annexe of Parliament was inaugurated by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Sushil Modi, a former Bihar deputy CM, had also pointed out that a new building of the state assembly was inaugurated by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and nobody had raised objections.
Chaudhary, a former Speaker of the assembly, who currently holds key portfolios, including parliamentary affairs, said, “In their blind devotion (andh-bhakti), people like Sushil Kumar Modi seem to have lost sight of the fact that the building inaugurated in Bihar was merely an extension campus. The state assembly has not been shifted to the new building”.
“Likewise, in Delhi, it was an annexe and not a new Parliament building itself where all MPs will henceforth sit and take part in sessions”, he pointed out.
