February 7, 2023
Derek O’Brien’s speech on February 7, 2023 in Rajya Sabha during the Motion Of Thanks On The President’s Address
Sir, three Members have spoken on the Motion of Thanks on the President’s Address. Of these three, two Members have been from the Ruling party. They spoke for 92 minutes and the opposition interrupted them not once. One Member has spoken from the Opposition for thirty minutes and his speech was interrupted seven times. This is the statistics. Leave that away. I am today on the Address by the President of India. The first quote from this Address is the subject of the five-six minutes of my speech. I quote, “The long-felt urge to be rid of this scourge of mega scams and corruption”. The hon. President of India said this and we all know, as is the tradition, the President of India does not write the speeches, the Government writes this speech. Let me say this with all honour to the President. Let me start from the first issue ‘mega scams’. Sir, institutions have been weakened; ED, CBI, SEBI. Here is a big scam happening; some say one lakh, two lakh, we are not getting into the number. Will the Government of India use the draconian PMLA, the Prevention of Money Laundering Act? Will they use it? They use it to very efficiently to hound the opposition, to put Lookout Notices and even to topple Governments. There is a big interesting statistics. Till date, 5,422 money laundering cases have been registered and 98 per cent of them have been registered in the last nine years. Interestingly, only one per cent, 25 people have been convicted by the ED. You cannot have one rule for the opposition and your opponents and you cannot have other rule for your friends and cronies? No Sir, you cannot. Now, let us come to LIC. My previous speaker has done me a service. He has explained so much about LIC, SBI and the Adani story because a lot of money of the poor and the middle class is at risk. Whose job is this to be the watchdog? It is the job of the Government and the institutions. The point today is that this Government has weakened institutions consistently over the last 8-9 years. I can talk about Parliament; I can talk about RBI; I can talk about SEBI, everyone. I only want to give you one example. There is a Preamble which we all are familiar with, the great Preamble of our Constitution. Sir, SEBI also has a preamble, and the SEBI preamble is mandated to protect the interests of investors and securities, to promote the development of the securities market and to regulate the securities market. Why was SEBI sleeping? Why the inaction? I would urge this Government to read section 11 (4) of SEBI. You are very eager to put look out notices, the 98 per cent for your political notices. Have you considered a look out notice in the last ten days? Think about it. Sir, these are big issues of corruption. But on the Motion of Thanks, we can also talk about the not-so-well-known issues. The BJP do write some good slogans. We like those slogans. A slogan is used by the Prime Minister is ‘na khaoonga na khaane doonga’. We need to ponder about this slogan, Sir. I never thought the day when I would come from the Trinamool Congress and start quoting BJP slogans. Let us now take other three-four scams. Then we all be discussing the bigger one. In Meghalaya, there is one smart meter scam, the second is rice scam and the third is police vehicle scam, and there are scams, scams, scams! The BJP is in the Government. But one of the most interesting ones which we have found was the Assembly dome scam. By these standards, it is only a small change, two-three hundred crores, chillar. The Meghalaya Legislative Assembly, a BJP Government-ruled State, was constructed and the entire dome sadly crushed. But the most interesting thing about this scam is this. Look at this partnership. Guess who built the Meghalaya dome. It is the Uttar Pradesh Nirman Nigam Ltd. This is true federalism in the worst possible sense. Who is responsible, Sir? Now, let us come to another point. Mr. Modi, the Prime Minister, was the Chief Minister. We know that. It hurts and pains me how a Chief Minister who became the Prime Minister can start the economic blockade of States, how he can be against the federalism, how he can squeeze the state of funds. Look at MNREGA. In Bengal, it was a total of Rs. 10,153 crores. Now, they paid a few hundred crores. MNREGA is now at a five years’ low of 42 days work per household. Many years ago, the current Prime Minister did not like MNREGA. He called it a gadda khodne ka scheme. Today, it is down to 42 days. There is another issue about MNREGA. This is a simple issue, a real issue, on the ground. The Act made mandatory for officials to upload labourers’ photographs twice a day. That is completely impractical. Because the connectivity is low, the attendance will go low, and what will happen is that the Union Government will have to spend less money on MNREGA. Sir, listen to the statistics. If you take nine crore active workers who are working hundred days a year, the total expense will be three lakh crores of rupees. Instead, Rs. 73,000 crores have been allocated by this Government. There is so much to talk about how anti-federal this Government is. Let us take the example of cess and surcharge. At one time, the Union Government would take 10 per cent of cess and surcharge. Now, that number is 20 per cent. Look at States’ spend on education and health. States are spending 60-80 per cent. Not the Union. Sir, another completely anti-constitutional story is a double-engine sarkar. It is anti-constitutional. You vote for me in this State because I am running the Centre. It doesn’t work, Sir. This is anti-constitutional. We are talking about diversity. The last one on this is the borrowing to the State — 3.5 per cent. But look at the fine print — 0.5 per cent has to be electricity reform. That’s the condition. Sir, for all the complaints about price, the Opposition is saying ‘price rise’. Full cream milk has gone up by 33 per cent. Toned milk has gone up by 36 per cent. And the Opposition is saying price is going up, price is going up. But they have been successful on a few selected share prices. That they have managed to take up. The same story is with fuel prices. Two-wheeler prices jumped by 40 per cent. Clause 2D at page 1 of the Rashtrapati’s Address talks about women. Two crore women quit the work force in the last five years. It talks about youth. The youth don’t want slogans. Four crore people are unemployed today. These are young people. These are CMIE data, Sir. Sir, we talked about institutions. I am on one of the great institutions which is being weakened. And before I say anything about the institution I am all praise for those independent journalists, the young men and women, who despite all the pressures from the media owners are still going and trying to do their very best for journalism. There is an old Zulu proverb. Today, even the Opposition’s voice is not amplified. Media owners have their agenda. There is an old Zulu proverb. I think this is the first time a Zulu proverb is being quoted in Parliament. Here is the problem with the media owners. A dog with a bone in its mouth can’t bark. Enough said, Sir. I can tell you sometimes… One second. Sometimes a speaker gets energized when he is interrupted. And I know it out of personal experience. He will bear me out. The Chief Minister of Rajasthan, who happened to be the Chairman here, if he were in the Assembly, one interruption would mean twenty more minutes uninterrupted it would go. So take the interruption as a recipe and nectar. Go ahead. Go ahead. Sir, I am allergic to nectar or Amrit Kaal of any kind. Sir, we were talking about the media. And we have all respect for those journalists. I was making a point because the media from a friendly country, a public broadcaster from a friendly country wants to show something. They have done some work based on research. We know which documentary we are talking about. There again, chapo. In fact, today, I spoke about the media owners. Look at the kind of journalism today we are coming up. I should not call it journalism. It is media owners’ reporting. What is the big news after the Budget? The big data point was, 124 times the Prime Minister banged the desk in Lok Sabha. Trinamool Congress are more on these figures; we want to give you some real numbers from MNREGA, from jobs, from SC/ST budget, etc. But you are telling us that 124 times desk was banged. Sir, I come back to the Speech. It says, “Let us fulfil the oath of the Constitution.” I want to read Article 25 of that Constitution. It says that all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion. What is going on? And for too long, we have kept quiet. Why? Polarize or don’t speak. What is happening in the churches in Assam? Why have they been burnt in Meghalaya, in Uttar Pradesh and in Karnataka? You didn’t even spare Mother Teresa when you shut the FCRA account. So, read Article 25 of the Constitution. In Jammu and Kashmir, bulldozing is happening there for the last so many weeks. There are 5-6 phrases which this Address does not contain. Two of the BJP speakers were celebrating and it is good. Congratulations to the lady Member from Nagaland. We are very happy to have you here. She is the first lady MP from Nagaland. The other one is the athlete, whom I never called by her name. I have made a deal with her that I would not call her by her name. I just call her ‘legend’ because she is a legend. Why don’t the lady from Nagaland and the legend ask this Government next week, if they so love women, to bring the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Parliament. Bring it and we will pass it in two days’ time. I don’t want to do Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao because then I will tell you what the Wrestling Federation and what your MPs do to the women. Next, missing in the speech is the fuel price. There is not a word about fuel price; not a word about inflation. Then comes doubling farmers’ income. Keep repeating a lie! At least, take the help of the Chief Minister of West Bengal. She promised to double farmers’ income when she came to power in 2011. She did it. She made it treble. Now, you shifted the goalpost and made it to 2027. Then, about migrant workers’ crisis, there is not even a line. We warned you on demonetization. You didn’t only demonetize the currency; you demonied India and its migrant workers. And there is another phrase about which not a word is mentioned in the Address. What happened? It is the smart cities. There is not a single word. Sir, now, I come to my last point today. We have two other speakers. I quote from this one here, the last page of the Speech. I quote, “A Bharat whose diversity is even more vivid and whose unity becomes even more unshakeable.” These are powerful words in this Address. In the last 23 years since we have been here, it is the tradition of my Party that we speak strongly against the Government, but we never boycotted; I don’t think any of us ever boycotted the President’s Address. So, please don’t go there. And we don’t ever move or press a motion on the President’s Address. We understand that the Government writes and the President speaks. But listen to these powerful lines from the President’s Address. It says, “A Bharat whose diversity is even more vivid and whose unity becomes even more unshakeable.” What no political party, not the Trinamool Congress, not my friends from DMK or CPM or Congress or Aam Aadmi Party or SP or BSP could do, somebody did. I will read this line once. All of us, what we could not do, somebody did and this is the crux. “A Bharat whose diversity is even more vivid and whose unity becomes even more unshakeable.” These lines were turned into a film before these lines were written. Well done Siddharth Anand, well done India’s biggest global ambassadors, well done those of you who made Pathaan. What we could not do, Shah Rukh Khan and Dimple Kapadia and John Abraham have shown this country. We learn from them. I would tell this Government; don’t mess with India’s biggest global ambassadors. You asked them to boycott Bollywood. They showed you one film with a beautiful message. Thank you, Sir. Thank you very much. Deepika Padukone; sorry! Sir, this is very important.… I used to be a big fan of Dimple Kapadia. I am still a big fan of Dimple Kapadia and Deepika. On a serious note, all of us here have a lot to learn because sometimes they get it so right and that was a powerful message. Thank you, Sir, for giving me time today. Thank you.
