Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday assured the Opposition that their every word is “valuable” to the government irrespective of their “numbers”, and asked it to actively speak in Parliament.
On the first day of the Monsoon session, Modi also urged allMPs to be impartial in the House and address issues related to the largerinterest of the nation.
Underlining the importance of an active opposition in ademocracy, the Prime Minister said he hopes the opposition “will speakactively and participate in House proceedings… I am hopeful that this sessionwill be more productive.”
“The Opposition need not worry about their numbers.Whatever numbers opposition parties may have got from the people, for us theirevery word is valuable. All their feelings are valuable,” Modi saidaddressing the media outside the Parliament before the start of the firstsession of the 17th LokSabha.
He said, “When we come to Parliament, we should forget’paksh’ (treasury) and ‘vipaksh’ (opposition) and should think about issueswith a ‘nishpaksh’ (impartial) spirit and work in the larger interest of thenation.”
Responding to Modi’s comments, the Congress hoped that thetrend by the BJP-led NDA government in its previous term to push key billswithout legislative scrutiny using “brute majority” is reversed.
Alleging that the Modi government used Parliament as a”rubber stamp” during its previous tenure, senior Congress leaderAnand Sharma said, “Legislation through ordinance is a very unhealthypractice in a democracy. It should only be used in extreme cases where there isan emergency requirement otherwise the due processes of lawmaking must to befollowed by the government in office.”
He said, “We will now wait for the Prime Minister’sassurance in this regard and whether the practice that was followed in the lastfive years is reversed, because in the last five years what we have seen isdisrespect to Parliament, where the bills were brought by the government andbecause of its brute majority in the LokSabha, Parliament was treated as arubber stamp.”
Most of the bills were not sent to the standing committeefor legislative scrutiny which is important for any law to be made, Sharmasaid.
The Congress hopes that now this practice will be honouredand dependence of ordinance and pushing through the bills without scrutiny willnot be repeated by the government, he said.
Earlier, talking about the newly constituted LokSabha, Modisaid it is historic in various terms as maximum number of women MPs have beenelected to the lower house since the Independence.
Modi said as this is the first session with new members,there will be a flow of new energy and a new enthusiasm will be reflected inthe House to realise the aspirations of the people.
The Prime Minister said his government worked on theprinciple of ‘sabkasath, sabkavikas’ (with all, development for all) during hisfirst term and people reposed their faith in it for a second time. As a result,a government has been re-elected with a clear majority after several decades,he said.
While the BJP-led NDA has 353 members, the saffron party hasa majority on its own with 303 members in the 545-member LokSabha. The Congresswith 52 seats is the second largest party in the house.
PM, MEMBERS TAKE OATH
Leader of the House and Prime Minister NarendraModi, DefenceMinister Rajnath Singh and Home Minister Amit Shah were among those who tookoath as Members of the 17th LokSabha that commenced here Monday.
As soon as the House met, the Members stood in silence for afew minutes as per the convention “to mark the solemn occasion of thefirst sitting of the 17th LokSabha”.
When Modi’s name was called out by the Secretary General fortaking oath, Members from the ruling NDA thumped the desk greeting the PrimeMinister with slogans such as ‘ModiModi’ and “Bharat Mata ki Jai.
The panel of presiding officers – K Suresh,BrijbhushanSharan Singh and B Mehtab – took oath as Members after the PrimeMinister.
While the Prime Minister and most of Union Ministers tookoath in Hindi, Union Ministers Harsh Vardhan, SripadNaik, AshwiniChaubey andPratap Chandra Sarangi took oath in Sanskrit.
While D V SadanandaGowda and Prahlad Joshi took oath inKannada, Harsimrat Kaur Badal took oath in Punjabi.
Union Ministers ArvindGanpatSawant, RaosahebPatilDanbe tookoath in Marathi, Jitendra Singh in Dogri, Babul Supriyo in English,RameshwarTeli in Assamese and Debashree Choudhury in Bangla.
BJD leader Mehtab took oath in Odiya.
UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, TMC leader SudipBandyopadhyay,Samajwadi Party leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son AkhileshYadav, NationalConference leader Farooq Abdullah, and DMK leaders Kanizmohi and A Raja werepresent in the House on the occasion.
Congress President Rahul Gandhi was not seen when the Housemet.
Earlier the new session began with playing of the NationalAnthem.
Before the House met, Virendra Kumar was sworn in as Pro-TemSpeaker by President RamnathKovind at RashtrapatiBhavan.
Several members took oath in their mother tongue, like mostof the YSR Congress Party MPs in Telegu. Many members from Assam took oath inAssamese.
BJP members from Bihar GopalJee Thakur and Ashok Kumar Yadavtook oath in Madhubani.
BJP member from Bihar Jarnardhan Singh Sigriwal expresseddesire to take oath in Bhojpuri, but the LokSabha Secretary General said thelanguage was not in the eight schedule of the Constitution.
Home Minister and BJP president Amit Shah thumped the deskas Tapir Gao from Arunachal Pradesh approached the mike stand to take oath.Secretary General of LokSabhaSnehlataShrivastavaby mistake called petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan to take oath and soonrectified it as the latter is a RajyaSabha Member.