Zee Media Bureau/Manisha Singh
New Delhi: Slamming the Congress for failing to get its house in order, senior BJP leader and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley said on Thursday that the chaos that ensued over Telengana was a blow to India`s parliamentary democracy.
Jaitley wrote in his blog - “We have repeatedly maintained that the UPA has lost the will to rule. Its ability to take and implement political decisions has come into severe questioning. What has happened today is on account of the UPA’s inability to handle the political situation arising out of the proposal to create the state of Telangana.”
He further says, “The Congress Party itself is vertically split. Its Members of Parliament from Andhra Pradesh are predominantly responsible for ensuring that Parliament is unable to function effectively. Its Chief Minister has ensured that administration in the state is completely paralysed.”
Reacting to the incident of pepper spray and the bedlam that was seen in Parliament today over the tabling of the Telangana bill, the BJP leader said, “Today’s incidents in the Lok Sabha is a serious blow to India’s parliamentary democracy. Dangerous and prohibited devices are used to block the parliamentary proceedings. Members are unsure of what actually has happened.”
On the creation of the separate state of Telangana, Jaitley said, “As against this the BJP, including all its members, from both Telangana and Seemandhra region are taking a cohesive stand in support of the creation of the state of Telangana while simultaneously addressing the legitimate concerns of the people of Seemandhra. Regrettably, the UPA has completely failed in this regard.”
The BJP leader ended his blog by writing, “The present crisis is directly on account of this failure. It is the Congress and Congress alone which must take the responsibility for completely mishandling the situation. Today’s ‘theatre of the absurd’ could have been avoided only if the Congress leadership had done adequate home work and were able to control its own members.”
In what is being termed as a new low in India`s parliamentary history, chaos ensued in the Lower House over the introduction of the contentious Telangana bill today.
Rajagopal, opposed to the division of Andhra Pradesh, used pepper spray in the Lok Sabha from a cannister. It resulted in the hospitalisation of three MPs, Vinay Kumar Pande, Ponnam Prabhakar and Balram Nai. They suffered suffocation, irritation in their eyes and coughing, They were later discharged.
In other incidents, another anti-Telangana member Venugopal Reddy, who belongs to the TDP broke the mike of the House Secretary General and a computer screen was broken in the Well as members from either side of the divide came to blows when Shinde stood up to introduce the bill for reorganisation of Andhra Pradesh, as reported by PTI.
There was chaos in the Upper House too with members staging protest in the Well over the creation of a new state.
The MPs from Seemandhra, who are against the creation of Telangana tried to stall the introduction of the bill for which Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde later claimed has been tabled but was disputed by BJP and other Opposition parties.
With PTI inputs
