Rajya Sabha MPs move 651 amendments to President's speech
NEW DELHI: The Rajya Sabha MPs have submitted a total of 651 amendments to President Pranab Mukherjee’s speech which also include some on demonetization and the government may fall short of numbers in the upper house if the opposition insists on voting on the amendments.
In the past two years, the government has faced embarrassing situation whereby opposition post voting has included amendment in president’s speech.
The amendments moved by MPs include CPM leaders Sitaram Yechury and Ritabrata Banerjee, CPI leader D Raja, TMC leader Derek O’Brien and Samajwadi Party leader Kiranmoy Nanda. None of the Congress MPs have moved any amendments.
Of the 651, a total of 19 were on demonetization with Yechury and Brien insisting on inclusion of number of people who died during the demonetization exercise. Samajwadi Party's Sanjay Seth has moved the highest number of 359 amendments.
Yechury moved nine amendments and wanted the speech to include regret that there is no mention of the "tragic death" of over 100 people in it. Brien moved two amendments saying that the address fails to pay respect to lives lost and hardship faced by the common man, farmers, fishermen and small businessman.
Raja's amendment is on the absence of mention of the "distressful condition" created by the exercise announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8, 2016. No mention of severe drought situation faced by some southern states like Karnataka was also highlighted in the amendments move by Yechury and Banerjee.
Nanda talks about "fast increasing trend" of unemployment and "sharp decrease" in sectors like real estate while Banerjee wants a mention of the misuse of Jan Dhan accounts for depositing money.