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In a strong attack against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress party president Sonia Gandhi said his government was the most “centralised in recent history”. And, termed it a government "of some people, by one person, for a select few".
In two speeches, one to Congress MPs and another on the floor of the Lok Sabha, she accused the government of deliberately eroding institutional authorities that ensured transparency, such as the Central Information Commission (CIC) and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), partly by keeping these headless. The Bharatiya Janata Party's one year in office, she said, had very little to showcase.
"Behind the smokescreen of 'development', the government is providing achche din only for crony capitalists. Under the pretext of 'Make in India', it plans to dilute the rights and interests of workers and labourers. Do they make nothing in India?" she asked.
The Congress has been alleging for a while that the government was attempting to finish the initiatives from the former's tenure, such as the Right to Information (RTI), rural jobs guarantee and food security.
Prior to giving a notice for adjournment of Lok Sabha proceedings to take up the issue of failure of institutional mechanisms, she made a strong attack on the government at a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party.
Severely criticising its functioning, she said, “Even the bureaucrats, supposedly empowered, feel paralysed because all key files are pending in the PM's Office for a decision."
She said the PM played domestic politics on his foreign visits, tarnishing previous governments as he had done in Canada and Germany.
In the Lok Sabha, she said: "The offices of the PMO, Cabinet Secretariat...are no longer accountable... It points to a clear attempt to avoid transparency and subvert the RTI."
"Information delayed is information denied. This is simply not acceptable. Protecting wrongdoers cannot be part of any government ethos."
Elaborating how the posts of Chiefs of CIC and CVC had been vacant for months, Gandhi also drew attention to the Lok Pal's also remaining unfilled and the Whistleblower's Bill not being notified, despite getting the President's assent in May 2014.
This, despite the government showing "extraordinary urgency" in pushing bills, the majority of these without referral to parliamentary committees.
Making it a point to also mention the attacks on minority religious institutions and communally charged statements by BJP and 'Sangh Parivar' leaders, Gandhi the "hypocrisy and insensitivity" of the government was "breathtaking".
Backing his mother outside Parliament, party vice-president Rahul Gandhi said, "The suit-boot ki sarkar wants to grab land from the people at the behest of its few industrialist friends and give entire power to them.”
