Venkaiah Naidu pulls up Jitendra Singh for using 'I beg to' to lay papers

Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday pulled up Union Minister Jitendra Singh for using the "colonial" expression of "I beg to" while laying official papers on the table of the House. When the House met for the day, Singh laid the papers concerning the Department of Space, saying that "I beg to lay papers listed against my name..." This led Naidu to say, "We have given up begging one year back. You are lagging". He said members can just say "I rise to present a report etc". They "need not beg", he said. Naidu said though the expression "I beg to..." was not unparliamentary, it would be "proper to Indianise it".

Withdrawal syndrome

Much confusion prevailed over the status of the Right to Information (Amendment) Bill on Thursday. The controversial Bill, objected to by several Opposition parties, seeks to amend UPA 1 government’s RTI Act, 2005. The Rajya Sabha’s revised list of business mentioned that Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension Jitendra Singh would introduce the Amendment Bill on Thursday. Copies of the Bill were also distributed to the media, but soon government officials got into the act to withdraw the Bill when they realised the minister was yet to introduce it in the Rajya Sabha. On Wednesday, the Rajya Sabha Secretariat was forced to withdraw a press release that had said the Telugu Desam Party stood isolated in the House, after its members protested.

Wrong perception

These days one can count on External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj (pictured) to counter some of the hatred being spewed on Muslims. On Thursday in the Rajya Sabha, Swaraj countered the perception that the population of Hindus in Bangladesh was declining. Swaraj cited data to say that the population of Hindus had increased by two percentage points in Bangladesh although some people wrongly believed that Hindus were migrating from that country and that their population was falling. “About the demographic changes in Bangladesh, as per statistics of the Bangladesh Bureau, in 2011 there were 8.4 per cent Hindus in the country, which has risen to 10.7 per cent in 2017,” she told the House.