Modi attacks Gandhis, says Parliament logjam revenge for LS poll loss

One family is repeatedly disrupting Parliament to avenge its loss in the Lok Sabha elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday, taking a veiled dig at the Gandhis, the first family of the opposition Congress party.

The government has struggled with its legislative agenda because of a lack of numbers in Parliament’s upper house, the Rajya Sabha. Opposition protests are also likely during the budget session – beginning February 23 -- over a raft of issues, including the President’s Rule in Arunachal Pradesh and the suicide of a Dalit student in Hyderabad.

“There are many leaders and parties even in the opposition who oppose Modi, the BJP and the government but they want Parliament to run and carry out its business,” Modi told a meeting of tea garden workers in Assam, where elections are due this year.

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“But one family is so rigid that they do not allow the Rajya Sabha to function and the nation’s agenda of development to be taken forward because the people of the country have defeated them.”

Modi described such disruptions as revenge by those who lost the national elections in 2014. The Congress was voted out of power after two straight terms, winning just 44 seats in what was its worst ever performance in elections.

“Those who have… come down from 400 to 40 (seats) have decided not to allow Modi to work,” he said without naming the Congress.

“They have decided to create obstacles and difficulties. The conspiracy for the same is going on.”

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Modi’s comments came a day after the government met top opposition parties but those talks skirted the legislative agenda for the budget session in the face of entrenched differences.

Little business has been possible in the last monsoon and winter sessions of Parliament, where key economic reform bills such as a national goods and services tax and proposals for friendlier labour laws have remained stuck in the face of opposition protests.