Take Parliament duties seriously, Modi asks MPs

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday came down hard on the Central Ministers who skipped their Parliament duty and sought a list of the absentee Ministers.

Addressing the BJP Parliamentary Party meeting, the Prime Minister indicated that the Parliament session, slated to conclude on July 26, could be extended if required for legislative purposes.

Modi asked MPs and Ministers to attend Parliament regularly and take their roster duties seriously. The PM is learnt to have told the Parliamentary Minister and the party leadership that he be informed if there is dereliction of duty by Ministers or MPs.

Ministers are required to be present in both the Houses to answer queries of the Opposition and give clarifications as and when required. Opposition leaders are understood to have conveyed to the Government about the absence of Ministers at regular intervals.

Setting goals till 2025, the Prime Minister said his Government would target humanitarian issues like leprosy, TB or disability and asked all MPs to work on a mission mode and in coordination with officials. Talking about leprosy and TB, the Prime Minister invoked Mahatma Gandhi. While inaugurating a hospital for lepers, Modi said that he would rather be invited to put a lock on it. Modi said Mahatma rather stressed the need to eradicate the disease.

He also suggested MPs to take up work of animal welfare measures and tend them if they fall ill.

The Prime Minister asked MPs to focus on their constituencies and make good impression on public as he said “first impression is the last impression”.

In the first Parliamentary party meet after the returning to power, Modi had taken a very dim view of the conduct of party MLA Akash, son of general secretary Kailash Vijayvargia, who had assaulted a civic official in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.

In a briefing after the meeting, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi told reporters that Modi asked BJP MPs to nurse their constituencies by playing a leading role in its development and advised them to take up a cause of human sensitivity like eradication of leprosy or tuberculosis and water conservation.

Joshi said the Prime Minister also noted that India has fixed a deadline of 2025 for eradicating TB against the global deadline of 2030 and asked MPs to work for its removal.