Shiromani Akali Dal president and Lok Sabha MP Sukhbir Singh Badal on Friday sought President Ram Nath Kovind’s intervention for immediately convening the winter session of Parliament.
‘Fake excuse’
In a letter to the President, the SAD chief said the government resorting to the COVID-19 argument to justify the cancellation of winter session simply does not wash. “How do you convince the people that Parliament could meet to pass the three controversial Bills at a time when the pandemic was at its peak, which required the Prime Minister to start the nation’s fight against it with a long, countrywide lockdown? Now, by the government’s own admission, the intensity of the pandemic no longer requires a lockdown. Then, how does one justify the cancellation of the winter session? What was right then cannot be wrong now,” the Akali chief wrote.
Mr. Badal said that it is “absurd and ironical” that the ruling party sees no danger to public health during gatherings of thousands of people in its election rallies in Bihar and now in West Bengal but wants the countrymen to believe that even a limited meeting of MPs embers of Parliament under strict SOPs would result in a pandemic flare-up. “There is no lockdown on BJP rallies but there is lockdown on Parliament comprising just a few hundred members and that too under controlled circumstances. The COVID excuse is patently fake and even ridiculous,” he stated.
In his letter, copies of which have been marked to the Lok Sabha Speaker and the Vice President in his capacity as the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, the Akali leader said Parliament must meet immediately as “a national priority” because the ongoing farmers’ movement affects nearly 100 crore people directly. “It would be insensitivity of the most shocking nature if the government just looks the other way while nearly two dozen innocent and patriotic annadatas (food producers) have already sacrificed their lives,” he wrote.
