NEW DELHI, April 16
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Thursday sharply criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address in the Lok Sabha, alleging that he sidestepped the core issue of delimitation during the ongoing special session of Parliament and failed to respond to concerns raised by the Opposition and several states. In a strongly-worded statement, Ramesh said despite the Prime Minister’s remarks, the “key issue at stake” remained unaddressed. “Uncharacteristically, the non-grihasthi Prime Minister delivered only a 40-minute speech in the Lok Sabha today. Characteristically, he addressed every matter other than the key issue that is actually at stake in the special session of the Parliament – delimitation. He didn’t address a single concern raised around it,” he said. Targeting the government’s appeal for bipartisan cooperation, the Congress leader alleged that the Centre had failed to foster genuine political consensus. He claimed that repeated requests by the Opposition, including calls by the Leader of Opposition for an all-party meeting after the conclusion of election campaigning in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal on April 29, had been ignored. “The Prime Minister claimed that the government has met every party on this issue. The truth is that it has rejected repeated calls… The government has not formally or informally consulted a single state government,” Ramesh said. He further accused the government of advancing delimitation-related proposals without adequate clarity or transparency, warning that the legislative measures could significantly alter the composition of the Lok Sabha. According to him, the Centre had “refused to commit in writing” the framework for the exercise, raising concerns about its impact on federal balance. Ramesh also criticised the Prime Minister for dismissing concerns raised by Chief Ministers and Members of Parliament as “technical bahane-baazi,” calling it a “willful blindness” to anxieties expressed by states across the South, East, Northeast, and parts of North India. He said these concerns reflected genuine fears about representation and political equity, adding that voters in states like Tamil Nadu and West Bengal would respond politically.
On the issue of women’s reservation, Ramesh reiterated the Opposition’s demand for a “quota within quota” for women from Other Backward Classes, accusing the Prime Minister of avoiding the subject despite referring to his own caste background in his speech. “We must introduce a quota within quota for women from the Other Backward Classes. But the Prime Minister is willfully deaf to this demand,” he said. He also credited former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi for laying the foundation of women’s political empowerment through reservations in local bodies, arguing that the current government had not acknowledged that legacy.
Emphasising that the Congress has consistently supported women’s empowerment, Ramesh said the current debate was fundamentally about safeguarding constitutional principles. “The issue at stake is the Constitution of India. In this insidious attempt to subvert the Constitution and hijack the system, the Modi Government will undoubtedly face defeat,” he asserted, referring to an anticipated vote in the Lok Sabha.
