A face-off between two political rivals — the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Jyotiraditya Scindia and Congress’ Digvijay Singh — who now find themselves on either side of the Parliament, provided some lighter moments in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
Mr. Scindia, who joined the BJP in March 2020, which brought down the Congress government led by Kamal Nath in Madhya Pradesh, was heckled by Congress members. Mr. Scindia, while defending the government, compared the response to the extended lockdown imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March 2020 to contain the spread of COVID-19 with the response to the 1975 Emergency imposed by Mrs. Indira Gandhi. “We saw a lockdown where, on a call by one person, the entire country by their own will, adhered to the directions of the government. And then there was another one in 1975, when Emergency was imposed, turning the entire country into a prison,” he said.
Mr. Scindia, reading out from the 2019 Congress manifesto, which talks about the need to amend the Agricultural Produce Market Committee Act, attacked the Congress for changing its stand on the three farm laws that have resulted in a prolonged agitation by farmers against them. He also quoted a much-circulated letter by the National Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar, written at a time when he was agriculture minister, seeking the views of Chief Ministers on the same issue.
“Yeh juban badalne ki aadat badalni hogi. Chat bhi mera pat bhi mera kab tak chalega? (the Opposition parties will have to change the habit of going back on their words. How long will the ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ go on?),” Mr. Scindia asked. His comments were met with guffaws from the Congress benches, who instead pointed fingers at him and accused him of hypocrisy.
The house broke into uproarious laughter when Rajya Sabha Chairman Venkaiah Naidu called Congress leader Digivijay Singh to speak next. “I didn’t make any changes, I am only reading out the list given to me,” Mr. Naidu said.
Mr. Singh began his speech by complimenting Mr. Scindia for defending the BJP government with the same passion with which he had defended the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and the Congress in the past.
The senior Congress leader also accused the government of mismanaging the COVID-19 pandemic, and giving precedence to the toppling of the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh before acting on the pandemic. Terming the three farm laws as “anti-farmers”, he said the Prime Minister had lost the farmers’ trust and even the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated Bharatiya Kisan Sangh had opposed the government’s farm laws. Taking a jibe at the PM, he asked whether the BJP government no longer wanted to maintain its relations with the RSS. In a democracy, he said, if people’s sentiments are seen as a revolution, then it is an autocracy. “You have got the majority but dissent is the essence of democracy,” Mr. Singh said.
