The birth anniversary of India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru turned into a political controversy as neither Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla nor Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu reached Central Hall of the Parliament to pay floral tributes on Sunday. Naidu is in Andhra Pradesh while Birla is in Rajasthan.
A press release issued by Lok Sabha Secretariat said that Minister of State in the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises, Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress President Sonia Gandhi along with Members of Parliament and former Members paid floral tributes at the portrait of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in the Central Hall of Parliament House on his birth anniversary.
However, senior leaders of the Opposition Congress were very unhappy. Congress’s chief whip in Rajya Sabha Jairam Ramesh tweeted: “Extraordinary scene today in Parliament at the traditional function to mark the birth anniversary of those whose portraits adorn the Central Hall. Speaker Lok Sabha absent. Chairman Rajya Sabha absent. Not a single Minister present. Can it get more atrocious than this?!”.
Jairam got support from other opposition leaders. Trinamool Congress leader Derek O’Brien said in a tweet: “Nothing surprises me anymore. This dispensation is destroying India’s great institutions, including Parliament one day at a time”.