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P Chidambaram repeats 'part-time' jab after Jagdeep Dhankhar's ‘defamation’ attack
Jagdeep Dhankhar described his words as an "inexcusable insult to the wisdom of parliament".
Congress leader P Chidambaram on Sunday appeared undeterred by Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar's vitriolic attack over his "part-timers" jab, as he maintained that the crucial criminal bills must have been entrusted to the Law Commission.
"In May 2020, the MHA constituted a Committee for Reforms of Criminal Laws. It had a Chairman, Convenor and members. Its composition was changed from time to time but in the end, the Committee had a Convenor and five members. All but one member were serving Professors of various Universities and served as part-time members of the Committee. It is this Committee that submitted drafts of the three new Criminal Laws. Eventually, Parliament passed the laws," he wrote on X.
"I maintain that the drafting of such crucial Bills should have been entrusted to the Law Commission and not to a Committee whose members served part-time and had other responsibilities," he added.
Also read: Defamatory and insulting: VP slams P Chidambaram’s remarks on new criminal laws
Chidambaram had told an English daily that the laws should not have been scrutinized by the panel of part-timers.
On Saturday, Dhankhar described his words as an "inexcusable insult to the wisdom of parliament".
"I do not have words strong enough to condemn such a kind of narrative being set forth. A member of parliament being labelled as a part-timer, ultimately it is a parliament that is a last source of law formulation," he stated.
Addressing the 12th convocation of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, Dhankhar said Chidambaram's remark had stunned him.
"This morning when I read a paper, an informed mind, who has been the finance minister of this country, a parliamentarian for a long and a Member of Rajya Sabha currently, he stunned me because I took great pride that this parliament has done a great thing. It had unshackled us from colonial legacy by giving us three laws that our epochal dimension from "Danda Vidhan" has come to "Nyaya Vidhan," he said.
He said Chidambaram and several other Opposition members didn't participate in the debate on the three laws in the Parliament. He asked the Congress leader to withdraw his "derogatory, defamatory and highly insulting observations".
The three new criminal laws – Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023, and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023 – came into effect on July 1.
The bills were passed in the Parliament during the Winter Session last year.
Before the passage of the bill, over 140 Opposition parliamentarians had been suspended.
With inputs from ANI, PTI
