Trinamool’s Derek O’Brien seeks clarifications on The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2016

Clarification 1

Sir, Satish Ji has raised a point. The Government has defined the commissioning mothers; they have to define the adopting mothers. There is no use of fighting over this. They may have overlooked the issue of surrogacy. So let them look at the case of commissioning mothers and adopting mothers.

To be fair to the Government, all of us who have studied this Bill – with our colleagues – also missed this point. I am glad that Satish Ji pointed this out.

Clarification 2

Sir, no one is trying to do any politics. This is about the surrogate mothers. Let him give us a one-line assurance that the surrogate mothers, like the commissioning mothers and the adopting mothers, will be included.

Clarification 3

Sir, this is not a mistake made by the Government alone. This is also a mistake made by all of us in the Opposition, who have examined the Bill. So let us not do any one-upmanship. Satish Ji pointed this out in good spirit.

We are simply saying, there are commissioning mothers, and there are adopting mothers. In between, the aspect of a surrogate mothers went unnoticed by all of us; it also went unnoticed by the government. So let us not say that the Government has made a mistake. The Opposition who spoke on the Bill has also made a mistake.

So, we humbly appeal to the Government to look at this.

 

Derek O’Brien speaks on the clarification by PM on missing coal files

Sir, I am not sure whether this is actually 4.26 p.m. on Wednesday or whether it is 12.38 p.m. on Tuesday. Because the same five MPs had got up, including me, and asked the same seven questions. But I will add two questions to that.

The similarity between yesterday and today is that yesterday we got no answers.

So, I am wondering whether I should conserve energy and not ask the two questions because in any case I won’t get the answers. Same questions I asked yesterday. Hon. Prime Minister on the floor of this House said that ‘He is not the custodian of those files.’ Pray, may I ask very humbly then who is the custodian of those files? This simple question I asked yesterday. Two, whether files go missing or they are made to go missing, there is a timeline maintained of the files till they were not ’missing’, can he present the timeline of those files when they were in custody? These are the two questions.