PM Modi has no time for Parliament but all the time for rallies

He is the Prime Minister who never sleeps. He is the Prime Minister who works 18 hours a day for the country. He is the Prime Minister for whom the Parliament ‘ was’ a temple and the Constitution his ‘Gita’. That is if people would take him at face value. But facts are a little different.

During the last one year the Prime Minister has spent 14 hours in Lok Sabha and 10 hours in the Rajya Sabha, claims AITC Member of Parliament Derek O’Brien.

In a scathing attack on BJP and the Prime Minister, he accused the ruling dispensation of having scant respect for institutions including Parliament. Speaking to The Indian express, O’Brien said, “We would have been happy if he sat through a discussion—it would change his attitude.”

“If you look at the records of Parliament, he has spent 14 hours in the Lok Sabha and 10 hours in the Rajya Sabha during the last one year…” he added.

The Prime Minister was not present in Parliament on Wednesday when the Lok Sabha held a discussion on the Rafale deal. And while the discussion was expected to continue on Thursday and it was anticipated that the Prime Minister would give a reply to charges levelled by the opposition, he went missing once again.

Earlier in the Rajya Sabha, O’Brien had accused BJP of creating Parliamentary history by fielding Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to speak on Defence while Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman , although present in Parliament, kept quiet.

The Rajya Sabha MP pointed out that during the last 10 years, between 65 and 70 per cent of the Bills were sent to Parliamentary Committees for scrutiny. But under the Modi Government, the percentage, he alleged, had come down to 20 or even less. None of the six bills introduced in Parliament in this session had been scrutinized by Parliament.

Even the budget last year was passed without discussion.

Another MP, Kumar Ketkar of the Congress, pointed out that the Government was objecting to even sending the Triple Talaq Bill to a Committee for scrutiny. Similarly, there was nothing wrong in demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee to study the Rafale deal, he said, but the Government was reluctant to allow any scrutiny.

On Thursday Congress President Rahul Gandhi had stepped up his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and accused him of "fleeing" Parliament instead of facing questions on the Rafale jet deal.

"So it seems our PM has fled Parliament & his own open book Rafale exam and is instead lecturing students at Lovely University in Punjab, today. I request the students there to, respectfully, ask him to please answer the 4 questions posed to him by me, yesterday," tweeted Rahul Gandhi.

He was referring to the Prime Minister’s day-long visit to Punjab, where he inaugurated the 106th edition of the Indian Science Congress (ISC) and addressed a political rally in Gurdaspur instead of returning from Jalandhar.