 "AIADMK and BJP try to corner Chidambaram on Aircel-Maxis and Ishrat Jehan")
After the brief truce observed for the presentation of the General Budget on Monday, the government and the Opposition parties today resumed with what has now become normal service for the last two sessions.
Members of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) disrupted proceedings in both Houses to demand "action" against Congress leader Karti Chidmabaram, son of senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, for his alleged involvement in Aircel-Maxis issue. Later in the day, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad held a press conference to highlight how the then Home Minister P Chidambaram had made UPA 2 government change its affidavit in the Ishrat Jehan encounter case.
Today, the two Houses were slated to discuss the 'motion of thanks on the President's address.' Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as also Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, are likely to speak on the motion on Wednesday.
The Rajya Sabha was also scheduled to take up a calling attention motion on the "inflammatory speech" allegedly delivered by junior Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Ram Shankar Katheria last week in Agra. Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad alleged that the AIADMK protest was "being organised by the ruling party" so that the House is unable to discuss Katheria's "inflammatory speech" against a minority community. A senior minister later retorted that the entire world knows the Congress and AIADMK were together in their opposition to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) constitution amendment Bill. In the morning, Katheria told reporters that he didn't make comments attributed to him in some media reports.
AIADMK MPs, in both Houses, waved copies of a newspaper that had today published a report on the alleged involvement of Karti, son of Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, in the Aircel-Maxis issue. In the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Rajiv Pratap Rudy said that the matter was already being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and it was incorrect for the AIADMK members to accuse the government of not having taken any action. Some weeks back, ED teams had carried out raids at offices of one time associates of Karti.
Meanwhile, both the Opposition as well as ruling alliance members moved reciprocal privilege motions accusing each other for "misleading" Parliament. Opposition MPs have filed a privilege motion against HRD minister Smriti Irani for "misleading" Parliament on some of the facts relating to the suicide of Dalit PhD scholar Rohith Vemula. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs have filed a privilege motion against Janata Dal (United) Rajya Sabha member KC Tyagi for his claim that never before has police entered the campus of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). The BJP has pointed out that Delhi Police, apart from the Emergency, had entered the campus in 1983, 1999 and 2009.
Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya has also moved a privilege motion against Congress MP Jyotiraditya Scindia. The Congress MP from Guna had alleged during his speech in the Lok Sabha last week that Dattatreya in his letter to HRD Minister had called Vemula "casteist, extremist and anti-national". Dattatreya has said Scindia misled the House as the letter had no specific mention of Vemula, but complained of "casteist, extremist and anti-national" politics in the Hyderabad Central University campus.
While senior BJP leaders now agree that Irani shouldn't have made public letters from Opposition MPs requesting admission to central government run schools for children of their constituents or even the comments posted on social networking sites on Goddess Durga and Mahisasura, the party plans to defend the minister in Parliament. The BJP will maintain that all documents that Irani read out from were duly authenticated.
