The vice president said he was “shocked and hurt.”
The standoff between the government and the opposition over the leaked documents intensified on Friday when Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge entered the lobby of the House with others to attract the attention of the Chairman, Jagdeep Dhankhar. The act, aimed at putting pressure on the opposition to debate the issue, triggered a heated exchange between the two leaders.
While Dhankhar said he was “shocked and hurt” and claimed that an opposition leader had never entered the well before, Kharge said he only did so because he was ignored despite raising his hands for 10 minutes, adding that the decision of the President’s stepmotherly behavior towards the opposition had “tainted the history of the Indian Parliament”.
Amid demands for a debate on the document leaks, including the NEET-UG one, which has affected 24 lakh students, Kharge, who is also the Congress president, stormed into the well of the House with other opposition members, prompting a scathing attack from Mr Dhankhar.
“Today has become such a dark day in the history of the Indian Parliament that the leader of the opposition has come to the House. This has never happened before. I am hurt, I am shocked. The Indian parliamentary tradition will deteriorate to such an extent that the leader of the opposition will come to the House, the deputy leader will come to the House,” the vice president said in Hindi, before adjourning the Rajya Sabha until 2 pm.
Asked about his actions outside the Rajya Sabha, Mr Kharge said he was left with no choice as Mr Dhankhar had been ignoring him to “insult” him.
“Actually, this is the president’s fault. I obeyed parliamentary rules and raised my hand for 10 minutes, but he didn’t look at me. That’s when I had to go in to get his attention, but he still didn’t look at me. When all the members came in (to the well), I came out, I didn’t even stay there. I tried to get his attention, but he was just looking at the treasury benches. When I raised my hand, he should have looked at me at the rules, but he did what he did to ignore me. and insult me,” said the president of Congress.
“The only other option I had was to start shouting loudly from my seat. So, I have to say that this is the president’s fault… There has been such a big scam in the NEET exam, the exam has been leaked, thousands of students are worried. We were just demanding a specific discussion and trying to raise the students’ problems,” she said in Hindi.
In a subsequent post on X, Mr. Kharge also accused the Vice President of having stepmotherly behavior towards the opposition.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh also took to social media to counter Dhankhar’s claim that this was the first time an opposition leader had fallen into the pit.
It is spread that Mallikarjun Kharge ji is the first opposition leader in Rajya Sabha to enter the well of the House in protest.
Memories are short, especially when old rivals become new partners.
On August 5, 2019, the then leader of the opposition in the Rajya…
– Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) June 28, 2024
Commenting on the BJP for its apparent closeness with former Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who left the party in 2022, Ramesh wrote: “Memories are short, especially when old rivals become new partners. On 5 August 2019, the then leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, sat on the steps leading to the president’s seat, which is largely part of the well. abolish Article 370 and downgrade the status of J&K from a full-fledged state to a Union territory. I should know: I sat next to him.”
‘NEET disaster’
The fight in Rajya Sabha followed the adjournment of the Lok Sabha for the day. Despite the government indicating that it was ready for a discussion on paper leaks in NEET, UGC-NET and other exams, the House was adjourned, initially till noon and then till Monday.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is now the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, attacked the government, saying it was dodging a discussion on an issue he called a “disaster”.
In a video message, Gandhi addressed the students who appeared for the NEET exam and are planning to appear for any other competitive exam: “There has been a disaster as far as NEET is concerned. Everyone knows that the paper was leaked, people earned billions of rupees and students were hurt and harmed. Students studied for years; it is their dream, their aspiration to enter the medical field and this has been destroyed and ridiculed.”
The Congress leader said he had raised the issue at the opposition meeting on Thursday and it was unanimously decided that a one-day discussion on NEET was necessary. The opposition, he said, was committed to keeping that discussion peaceful and accommodating.
“I tried to raise it in Parliament. As you saw, I was not allowed to speak. This is an issue that has affected 2 million students, documents have been leaked 70 times in seven years. It is clear that there is a systemic problem and that there is a huge amount of corruption. The students want a quick resolution, and this was the idea behind the discussion. Millions and millions of people and their families are suffering, they do not know what is going to happen in the future and they want clarity. “Gandhi highlighted.
Claiming that the Prime Minister did not want a debate, the Congress leader said the opposition is not looking for a fight with the government but wants to put its views on the table.
Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said the government was ready for a debate and has already said it will take strict action against anyone found guilty.
“The president spoke about the exam in her speech yesterday and that shows the government’s intention that we are prepared to face any problem… When the government is ready to present its point of view, why is the confusion? “We are going to take the strictest measures and the CBI is going to nab everyone (those involved). We will not spare anyone,” he said, according to news agency PTI.