India
On Wednesday, Congress leader Anand Sharma claimed in Rajya Sabha that BJP president Amit Shah, in his speech on NRC, had termed all PMs after Rajiv Gandhi as 'cowards'
By Ajit K Dubey and Ankur Sharma
The Congress seems to be treating parliamentary debates as WhatsApp gossip. During the ongoing monsoon session itself, its leaders have twice tried to mislead the nation by misrepresenting facts. Will the nation sit back and watch Parliament being disrespected like this?
On Wednesday, Congress leader Anand Sharma claimed in Rajya Sabha that BJP president Amit Shah, in his speech on the national register of citizens (NRC), had termed all prime ministers after Rajiv Gandhi as “cowards” and that the word should be expunged from the speech.
However, on Thursday, Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu made it clear that the BJP president had not made any such remarks and there was no need to expunge anything from his speech.
Rahul set the tone
The precedent was set by Congress president Rahul Gandhi himself when he dragged in French president Emanuel Macron during the no-confidence motion to allege that defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman was under pressure from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to say that there was secrecy pact between India and France to not reveal the commercial details of the 36 aircraft-Rafale deal between the two countries.
He claimed that the French president had told him that there was no such secrecy pact which barred the government from going public about the deal.
The claim was busted then and there by Sitharaman, who showed the 2008 pact signed between the two sides under the supervision of the then defence minister AK Antony of the Congress and his French counterpart.
By the evening, the French government also had to come out in support of their president saying there was an agreement in this regard and the Congress president was not correct in saying so.
This issue raises serious questions about the way Sharma levelled the charges against Shah as all the proceedings of Parliament, including every single word uttered by an MP are recorded and videos of speeches are also available. There was no way Sharma could not have checked Shah's speech, but he chose to go ahead with his charges without checking facts.
How to stop this?
Already, four BJP members have moved a breach of privilege motion against the Congress president for lying on the floor of the house, but given long time taken by the privileges committee on deciding on such issues, the party seems to have been emboldened to use Parliament for pedalling its propaganda.
However, it is high time that there is swift and strict action taken against members trying to mislead the nation with fake news on floor of the house.
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