Joint Statement issued by Shri Arun Jaitley, Leader of Opposition (Rajya Sabha) & Smt. Sushma Swaraj, Leader of Opposition (Lok Sabha)

Posted on February 22, 2014, No Comments admin

The last session of the Parliament ended yesterday. We look back on the last five years with a mixed feeling. The last five years showed a disturbed Parliament. On one hand, the disturbances in Parliament were much higher than in the past. On the other hand, some of the most outstanding debates took place and some longstanding legislations were approved by the Parliament. The BJP has a sense of satisfaction that we contributed to some very important debates on the economy, federalism, national security and corruption. At the same time the party rose above partisan considerations and supported several legislations such as the Food Bill, the Land Acquisition Bill ,the Lokpal Bill and the Andhra Pradesh Bifurcation.
The last five years of Parliament witnessed the government facing serious allegations of corruption like the 2G Spectrum Allocation, the Coal Block Allocation Scam, the Commonwealth Game Scam, the VVIP Agusta Helicopter deal as some of the scams that eroded the credibility of the Government. There was a non-performing government on the management of the economy. The growth rate of the country had depleted, the fiscal deficit rose to record high, the Rupee had weakened. The investment environment in the country was extremely disturbed. The decision making process of the Government was paralyzed. On National Security, existence of insurgency picked up in the Maoist dominated regions of the country. Jihadi terrorism, both cross-border and indigenous continued to flourish. The UPA government had linked inaction on national security with vote bank politics rather than security considerations. On foreign policy, India lived in disturbed neighbourhood. Our relations with most of our immediate neighbours deteriorated. Initial years saw the UPA government becoming subservient to the United States and finally the relationship between India and the US soured on certain recent incidents.
The UPA had hostile attitude towards various established institutions. The Public Accounts Committee was not allowed to effectively function. The JPC on the 2G allocation scam came out with a report which damaged the credibility of the Parliamentary institution. The CAG was repeatedly attacked in the Parliament. It was this confrontationist attitude of the UPA, which resulted in the loss of certain working days of the Parliament, particularly when it came to investigating several scams in the Government. The last three sessions of Parliament were lost on account of mishandling of the Telangana issue by the UPA. It was the Congress members of the Parliament who led the disturbances in these sessions. We end the last session of Parliament with a sense of satisfaction. To the best of our ability we performed our role as an effective Opposition. The June, 2009 session of the Parliament started on a high note for the UPA when it had been elected for the second term. The February, 2014 session ended in an all-time low with the prospect of the UPA being reduced to a much smaller political combination. The Parliament was used as an effective instrument to keep the Government in check and expose its misdemeanor. Our only regret is more debate and lesser disturbances would have enabled us to expose the UPA even more.

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