The Lok Sabha on Friday witnessed heated exchanges between the Congress and the BJP members, leading to four adjournments over Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur barb that Sonia “Gandhi family was cheating the public”, during a debate on the tax laws amendment Act to include tax concessions to donations in PM Cares Fund. The Lok Sabha resumed only after Thakur apologised.
Chaos started after Congress MPs Shashi Tharoor, Manish Tewari and TMC MP Sougata Roy opposed the creation of PM Cares Fund and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman allowed her deputy Thakur to reply to the Opposition charges.
Praising Prime Minister Naredra Modi and the fund, Thakur started attacking the Opposition and alleged that “Gandhi family” fooled the people by including the Congress president in the PMNRF set up by Jawaharlal Nehru.
“Opposition opposing PM Cares Fund, just for the sake of it, is like they opposed EVMs & then lost many elections. They subsequently termed Jan Dhan, demonetisation, Triple Talaq and GST bad. They find a defect in everything, truth is their intention is defected. Nehru ordered the creation of the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund in 1948 like a royal order but its registration has not been done even till today. How did it get FCRA clearance?,” Thakur asked.
The Opposition leaders slammed Thakur and sought his apology.
“Who is this Himachal ka chokra (boy) who is abusing our leaders? He is abusing Nehru and this guy was not born during Nehru’s time. He must apologise,” declared Congress Leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.
TMC’s Kalyan Banerjee accused Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla of showing “softness and partiality” to BJP, leading to the first adjournment at 4pm. The House was adjourned for 30 minutes and chaos continued when the House assembled up to 6pm.
After the fourth adjournment with each 30 minutes deferring, Thakur apologised for his comments and House started the debate on Supplementary Grants from 6pm.
“My aim was not to hurt anybody with my words. I am pained if my words hurt anybody here,” said Thakur.
The Speaker urged the MPs to keep restraint and finish the debate as early possible by “today itself” by passing demands for grants.
Initiating the debate BJP’s Jayant Sinha detailed the current economic situation during the Covid-19 from March. He described the slew of measures implemented by the Modi Government to tackle the economic conditions. “The number of job demands under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has come down from 6 crore to below 2 crore because our economy is recovering after unlocks,” he said
Opposition leaders Chodhury, Saugata Roy and Dayanidhi Maran (DMK) and Bhartruhari Mahtab (BJD) questioned the Government, accusing total failure in economy and administration during the Covid-19 times. “Problems started after the Prime Minister announced lockdown in just 4 hours. Rest what happened is known to all. The economy is shattered,” he said.
“You have no answer except chanting Modi Modi all the time,” he said looking towards the Treasury Benches.
Maran slammed the Centre for the huge dues of GST collection to the States. “Tell us when are you paying to States? Tamil Nadu already hit by the unprofessional implementation of GST. We were supposed to get compensation of more than Rs 12,000 crores,” he said, detailing the problems of managing finances by the States due to failure of the Centre to pay the GST dues.
Shiv Sena MP Arvind Sawant also blamed the Centre for bad financial management and big dues in GST to be paid to the States. BJD MP Mahtab pointed out that while more than 30 per cent shortfall in revenue and the expenditure has shot up to more than 11 per cent from March, urging the Government to overcome the economic problems with feasible ideas by consensus with all political parties.
“We need a credible plan to overcome the covid-19 hit economy and market,” he said.
