‘Centre sabotaged Winter Session on flimsy grounds’

Congress president Sonia Gandhi lashed out at the Centre here on Monday for “sabotaging” the Winter Session of Parliament on “flimsy” grounds.

Addressing the Congress Working Committee, she termed the Narendra Modi government as “arrogant” and said the Centre’s move has cast a dark shadow on parliamentary democracy. Modi lacks the courage to face Parliament, she added.

She further said the Centre is mistaken if it thinks that by “locking the temple of democracy”, it will escape constitutional accountability ahead of the Assembly elections in Gujarat. “Parliament is the forum in which questions should be asked —questions about corruption in high places, conflict of interest of serving ministers and dubious defence deals. The government will be obliged to answer these questions, but in order to avoid the questions and answers ahead of Gujarat elections, the government has taken the extraordinary step of not holding a Winter Session when it should be held,” the UPA chairperson said.

Modi had the audacity to have a midnight celebration in Parliament to launch an “ill prepared and flawed” GST but he lacked the courage to face Parliament, she said.

Refuting her charges, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the Congress had also delayed a session in 2011 and even earlier because the sittings coincided with election campaigns. "It has been a tradition and it has happened several times that Parliament sessions are rescheduled when an election is happening,” he told reporters in Rajkot.

Reiterating the Congress’s stand that unemployment, rising inflation, falling exports and GST are causing tremendous suffering to people, she said demonetisation did nothing but rub salt on the wounds of farmers, small traders, housewives and daily workers. “The fortunes of a handful are being built by destroying the future of the poor and the oppressed. Yet the Prime Minister continues, with greater vigour, to make announcements, false promises and to quote facts and figures that have nothing to do with the reality on the ground,” she said.

The Rae Bareli MP alleged that the Centre is “forcefully trying” to change the history of modern India by erasing the contributions made by Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi by rewriting school text books, through malicious misinformation and propaganda, and ignoring the birth centenary of Indira Gandhi. “This vilification is blatant and for all to see,” she added.