A distance of 2,285 km from Delhi is not enough for finance minister and Lok Sabha leader Pranab Mukherjee to forget and forgive the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for their disruptive activities in the Parliament. In faraway Silchar — the biggest town of Assam’s Barak valley — the impasse of Parliament’s monsoon session became the talking point for the Congress in the poll-bound Assam, with an angry Mukherjee asking people not to vote for BJP for wasting Parliament’s precious hours.
“People should ask BJP why are they seeking votes? To give slogans in the Parliament and state assembly? You can go to roads or fields to shout slogans. The Parliament or the state assembly are not places to give slogans and disrupt proceedings. MLAs and MPs are elected to serve the people, not to obstruct work in the legislative houses,” Mukherjee said here, as he came to campaign in the area.
If wastage of an entire winter session and acceptance of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) remained as scars, the immediate provocations seem to be the presence of BJP heavyweights in the state, when Mukherjee was around. The two leaders of Opposition of the Parliament, Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, were joined by BJP president Nitin Gadkari. Party veteran Lal Krishna Advani, too, came to Guwahati as BJP eyes to improve its performance here.
“I have been serving the Parliament for the last 40 years. But I have never seen such things that are happening for the past few years,” the veteran politician almost lamented in a Silchar auditorium.
In Hojai, Mukherjee tried to explain the village folks parliamentary democracy in simple language: “They wanted JPC to probe the 2G telecom issue. I told them a JPC is already there in form of a Public Accounts Committee. That, too, headed by an Opposition leader. But they didn’t listen and insisted their demand be accepted.”
“You must have read the story that two mothers were fighting for the custody of an infant. The king ordered the baby to be cut into two pieces and give each part to two mothers. The genuine mother broke down and said let the other woman take away the baby. At least, my child would survive. In the same way, we accepted their demand to keep the Parliamentary democracy alive,” Mukherjee told a packed audience in Hojai.
While Mukherjee is busy firing salvoes at BJP over their conduct, Sushma Swaraj feels the disappointment of the people with the UPA will yield good results for BJP in the state. “The atmosphere here is very favourable for BJP due to three factors — there is a strong anti-incumbency feeling against the present state government, utter disappointment with the Congress-led government at the Centre and positive feelings for BJP,” Swaraj said today. She also defended the role of BJP in the Centre, saying, “The people relate to the issues raised by BJP.”
