Two interventions the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as many by Home Minister Amit Shah, and a strong counter-attack on facts by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju — all this during Rahul Gandhi’s debut speech as the Leader of Opposition Party (LoP) in the Lok Sabha gave a glimpse of the combative times ahead in Parliament.
The BJP top brass has a clear strategy here – expose Rahul Gandhi’s “lies” on the floor of the House and portray him as a politician who is diminishing the stature of the LoP post by his “irresponsible utterances”, say party insiders. This reflected in how Prime Minister Modi chose, in a rather unprecedented way, to intervene twice during Rahul Gandhi’s speech. Once to underline how the LoP post carried seriousness and on another occasion to highlight a remark of Gandhi that was subsequently expunged from Parliament records.
Clearly, the government won’t allow Rahul Gandhi to run amok as the LoP, a position that allows him far greater liberty to speak in Parliament.
Home Minister Amit Shah made it a point to insist upon Speaker Om Birla to not give the long rope to Gandhi, and asked the Speaker to direct the Congress MP to authenticate the claims that he had made on the floor of the House. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan similarly questioned Gandhi’s claim on particular schemes, doing a quick fact-check, while Rijiju cited the Parliament rulebook to highlight violations by Gandhi of the same.
Two Union Ministers, Ashwini Vaishnav and Rijiju, later held a press conference in Parliament to highlight various “untruths” of Rahul Gandhi. Major portions of Gandhi’s speech were expunged by the Speaker.
While the Congress claims such a counter-attack from the Treasury Benches shows the government is rattled by Rahul Gandhi, the BJP is clear that it won’t sit quiet or be on the back-foot in Parliament when Rahul Gandhi speaks. With the opposition camp claiming a “moral victory” in the Lok Sabha elections after reducing the BJP to 240 seats, the government is determined to bust the notion that it is “weak” or will succumb to an Opposition that has a spring in its step.
A senior Union Minister told News18 that it was surprising how the Congress camp had celebrated Rahul Gandhi becoming the LoP while the party had failed to cross the two-digit mark in the elections and Narendra Modi was the PM again.
PM Narendra Modi in an interview to News18 before the elections had said that he misses having a “strong Opposition which keeps the government on the sword’s edge and on its toes”. He was responding to a question on whether he thought Rahul Gandhi had not matured as a politician.
Modi then had also highlighted that in a big democracy like India, “there should be a strong opposition, an aware Opposition, an active opposition, one that is well-read and well-informed”.
While the government in its third term has finally got a strong Opposition with bigger numbers, what BJP now seems to be highlighting that an “aware, well-read and well-informed Opposition” is still missing, and the BJP won’t leave any stone unturned in Parliament to expose it. Interesting times lie ahead.
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