February 2, 2026
Sagarika Ghose’s speech during the Motion Of Thanks On The President’s Address
Sir, on behalf of my Party, All India Trinamool Congress, I rise to speak on the Motion of Thanks on the President’s Address. I wish to start by quoting renowned Bengali poet Sukumar Ray. “ A king, dressed in warm clothes at the height of summer, is chewing peanuts and writing nonsense on a slate. He is totally distant from reality. He is in fact living in a state of denial.” He is, in fact, living in a state of denial, the state of denial, denial of the present day reality, Sir. This is what the mentality of this Government is. It is a ‘Denial of the present day reality Government’. That is why, this Government gets a grade D. If the hon. President’s Address on this Government’s performance had to be given a grade, it would be given a D Grade because it is in denial, denial, denial. The Modi Government is in denial of the lived reality of citizens. Let me now explain in detail. The President spoke of upholding Constitutional values. Fundamental to Constitutional values, Sir, is the Right to Vote. In the ongoing revision of electoral rolls, the Right to Vote is being snatched away. In Bengal, 10 living voters in Cooch Behar were declared dead. Almost 140 have died because of the severe trauma that citizens are facing because of the ongoing revision of electoral rolls. 1.25 crore citizens in Bengal have been placed in a list named ‘logical discrepancy’ simply because either their mother’s age is too low or there is spelling mistake in their names and it is a little different or they have five siblings. They have been placed in a list called ‘logical discrepancy’. They are facing disenfranchisement. A software has created this list. Can technological software determine citizenship? Can an algorithm be allowed to decide who can vote and who cannot? Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has been summoned for a hearing. So has Mohammad Shami, so has Jhulan Goswami, top cricketers, and, there has been not a word of reassurance from the top Constitutional office that the Right to Vote will be protected. Does this Government know the pain that citizens are going through because of this exercise? It doesn’t know because it is a Grade D Government living in denial. Denial, denial, denial and only thinking about the long term. As John Maynard Keynes said, in the long term, we’re all dead. What about the present reality? What about the present reality? It is denial of the present reality. Let me give second example of denial of reality. The hon. President said the Government is building a system free of corruption and scams. Sir, this is laughable. A series of reports by none other than the Comptroller and Auditor General, tabled at the end of 2025, has said that the much-doubted Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) payments is seeing fraud to the tune of thousands of crores. There are large-scale fraud and mismanagement in GST collections. The CAG has flagged Rs. 22,000 crore worth of irregularities in GST collections. I am not saying this, Sir. The Comptroller and Auditor General, a constitutional body, has said this. The CAG has found massive anomalies in the Skill India portal. The digital systems, the so-called game changer of this Government, are enabling fraud on a gigantic scale through ghost payments, data scams, transfers to ineligible beneficiaries. The Direct Benefit Transfer scheme, according to the CAG, is shot through with data rackets and swindling on a huge scale. Thousands of crores of rupees are flowing into DBT systems without checks. There are reports of massive scams in BJP-ruled states. Massive scams! In Goa, the cash-for-job scam has played out. In Madhya Pradesh, there have been repeated reports of corruption scandals. BJPruled Uttarakhand has seen a series of scams. There is the Home Guard uniform scam. Tragically, Sir, the Media and the Press has been captured. They have captured the Media and the Press. That is why, these scams are not investigated and do not make headline news. But, they are scams nonetheless. The Enforcement Directorate, the ED, the ‘Election Department’ of the ruling party, never raids ruling party politicians. 95 per cent ED cases are against the opposition. The ED even raided our own party office just before the Assembly Elections. But the ED does not touch the BJP. Of 25 opposition leaders who crossed over to BJP since 2014, 23 have got a clean chit from the so-called ED washing machine. Is this a scamfree Government, Sir? No, it is not a scam-free Government. Those who say it is scam-free are living in denial, denial, denial, D-Grade Government, denial of reality Government. Number three example of denial of reality; the hon. President spoke of India being the fastest-growing major economy and keeping inflation under control. But today, India is one of the most shockingly unequal nations in the world. The latest World Inequality Report, 2026 shows that the top 10 per cent earners capture 58 per cent of the national income while the bottom 50 per cent gets only 15 per cent of the national income. The top 10 per cent Indians hold 65 per cent of the national wealth while bottom 50 per cent hold only 6 per cent of the national wealth. 83 per cent Indians are living on less than Rs. 171 per day. So, when the hon. President says the Government is moving forward on the reforms express, what reforms express are we talking about? A constitutional address should be a diagnostic exercise, not a celebratory victory poem. A constitutional address should be a moment of institutional introspection. But this Government cannot introspect because it is in denial of the presentday reality. That is why it is a D-Grade Government. Shockingly, this Government has repealed MNREGA which was the only major law which was named after Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of our Nation. The Government inherited this scheme from past Governments, and in difficult conditions, NREGA was hailed and gained global recognition for being a lifeline of the rural poor. The President said the new VB-G RAM G law will provide 125 days of work. This is nothing but an illusion because sufficient funds are simply not being allocated. This Government has consistently lowered budget allocations to NREGA. How will it provide 125 days of work? Is the D-Grade Government, the denial of reality Government, aware of rural distress? It is not. Farmers’ protests have registered a five-fold increase since 2017. There were 34 farm protests across 15 States in 2017, rising to 165 protests across 22 States in 2020-21. Farm suicides account for 6.3 per cent of total suicides in the country. But the President said that there is a new momentum to rural development. What new momentum to rural development, Sir? All this Government knows is denial, denial, denial. Grade-D Government, denial of reality Government. What about the state of the rupee? When the UPA was in power, a former Gujarat Chief Minister, who we know very well, compared the rupee to the age of the then Prime Minister. Should we make similar remarks today when the rupee is in free fall? The D-grade Government is in denial of the problem, practices distraction and uses division as political strategy. Just like the king, the king who munches peanuts on a hot day wearing warm clothes is in denial of reality, that is the kind of denial they are under. Sir, the President mentioned that the Government is creating a powerhouse of green growth. Green growth! Did I hear that right? The President did not, by one word, mention India’s toxic levels of air and water pollution. The Lancet Countdown records that air pollution in India causes 17 lakh deaths annually. Delhi’s winter pollution is equivalent to smoking 33 to 50 cigarettes per day. Air pollution causes financial losses to the tune of 9.5 per cent of GDP. Last month in Indore, 15 died and over 200 were hospitalized because drinking water was so polluted. Economist Gita Gopinath has said that pollution in India, actually, has a more dangerous impact on the economy than even tariffs. But there was not one word on pollution on the President’s Address. I looked through the Address to find the word ‘pollution’. It is not there. It is left out because this Government is in denial of the present-day realities. Sir, denial number five, the hon. President said the vision of ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’ is bringing positive change. There is no sabka saath and there is no sabka vikaas in today’s India. Shocking attacks against Christian community took place during Christmas last year. Over 800 cases of violence against Christians took place in 2024. This Government needs a reality check on sabka saath, sabka vikas. Offences related to religion increased by almost 50 per cent from 2021 to 2023. India Hate Lab records over 1,300 cases of hate speech in 2025 – an average of more than three hate speeches per day. Three hate speeches per day! An 18-year-old Kashmiri shawl seller was recently attacked in Dehradun. It is only the latest in the list of such incidents. Will this Government accept it? No, because this is a ‘denial-of-reality’ Government. D stands for denial. It is a Grade ‘D’ Government. Denial of reality number six is this. Hon. President said that lakhs of youth are being provided jobs. But the anecdotal evidence says otherwise. Why did almost 25 lakh youth — many of them are PhDs, MBAs, law graduates — apply for 50,000 Class IV (peon) jobs in Rajasthan? In 2024, Haryana Kaushal Rojgar Nigam reported that over 39,000 graduates and over 6,000 post-graduates applied for the post of sweeper. In U.P., nearly 50 lakh applied for 60,000 posts of constable. The CAG’s 2025 Performance Audit has underlined the failures of the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana. Scores of certificates have been handed out, but large numbers of skilled youth remained unemployed. Youth unemployment rate between the ages of 15 and 29 stands at over 14 per cent, which is three times the national rate. Sir, there is another worrying trend. It is the closing of Indian mind. The minds of the young are being closed for ideological reasons. School history textbooks are being rewritten for short-term ideological reasons, which is a grave disservice for future generations. Has the Government, in denial of reality, even read the Annual Status of Education Reports which show that Standard VIII children cannot read Class 2 textbooks or do basic mathematics of the Class 2 level? Standard VIII children cannot do Class II level school work! UNESCO says as many as 56 per cent Indian children are not proficient in reading. Of the over 15 lakh schools in India, 1.5 lakh lack functional electricity, and almost 70,000 schools lack functional toilets. Student suicides have risen sharply by 73 per cent from 2014 to 2023. But this Government is in constant denial. D stands for denial. The Grade ‘D’ Government is in denial mode. Hon. President spoke of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) law creating a sense of security. But a celebrated activist from Ladakh, who was feted by this very Government, has been imprisoned under NSA. University students have been held without trial for five years. Ten thousand citizens were arrested under UAPA from 2019 to 2023 with a conviction rate of only three per cent, showing that these arrests are designed only to spread fear. Fifteen journalists have been charged under UAPA since 2014. At least five stand-up comedians have faced so many attacks that they can no longer stage shows in our country. The great writer Umberto Eco said that laughter kills fear and without fear there is no tyranny. This Government wants to exercise tyranny by shutting down the power of laughter, by shutting down the power of comedy. That is why when we cannot laugh, we cannot question tyranny. They want to exercise tyranny. That is why they are shutting down subversive and important power of laughter. That is why this Government gets a ‘D’ grade. It is a Grade ‘D’ Government. It is a ‘denial-of-reality’ Government. In the end, I would like to say that I have listed these denials. But there are many more. But, what makes it worse is this regime’s ignorance of the great diversity and plural traditions of our country and indeed of our heroes. The President of the ruling party, BJP, said that Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Peace. The President of the BJP said it while Tagore won it for Literature in 1913. Sir, a few weeks more and we will have the Bengal elections. The BJP is clueless on Bengal, but it wants to win votes in Bengal. I will end it with some lines from Tagore. “They have to go sometime or the other. They can’t stay forever. What will they leave behind?” They will leave behind a Government that has consistently been in denial about reality — denial, denial and denial. A D-Grade Government has been in denial about present day reality. Thank you.
