20 Opposition parties decide to boycott inauguration of new Parliament building
Taking umbrage over the “grave insult” meted out to the President of India by the Union government by not inviting her to inaugurate the new Parliament building, and instead deciding it to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite the President being an integral part of the ‘Parliament for the Union’, as stated explicitly in Article 79 of the Constitution, all the major Opposition parties in the country have decided to boycott its inauguration on May 28. Nineteen of them have written a joint open letter to the public, stating their reasons for taking this decision.
Twenty Opposition parties have decided to boycott the opening of the new Parliament building in protest against the President not being invited to do the honours.
Nineteen of the parties, excluding AIMIM, have written an open letter addressed to the public, dated May 24, in which they said that “completely sidelining President Droupadi Murmu, is not only a grave insult but a direct assault on our democracy which demands a commensurate response”.
The 19 parties are INC, DMK, AAP, SS(UBT), SP, CPI, JMM, KC(M), VCK, RLD, AITC, JD(U), NCP, CPI(M), RJD, IUML, NC, RSP and MDMK.
The letter quotes Article 79 of the Constitution to buttress the importance of the President: ‘there shall be a Parliament for the Union which shall consist of the President and two Houses to be known respectively as the Council of States and the House of the People’.
Explaining her role further, the letter states: “The President is not only the Head of State in India, but also an integral part of the Parliament. She summons, prorogues, and addresses the Parliament. She must assent for an Act of Parliament to take effect. In short, the Parliament cannot function without the Parliament.”
The decision of the prime minister to inaugurate the new Parliament all by himself, despite the role played in the functioning of the institution by the President “insults the high office of the President”, “violates the latter and spirit of the Constitution” and “undermines the spirit of inclusion which saw the nation celebrate its first woman Adivasi President”.
After stating in brief the various “undemocratic acts” committed by the prime minister and his party, the BJP, which have “relentlessly hollowed out the Parliament”—like disqualifying and suspending Opposition MPs, and muting their mics in Parliament to prevent their speeches, Treasury benches disrupting Parliament, passing controversial legislation like the three farm laws “with almost no debate” and making many parliamentary committees “practically” defunct—the letter concludes by saying that since “the soul of democracy has been sucked out from the Parliament”, the parties have taken a “collective decision to boycott the inauguration of the new Parliament building”.
Incidentally, May 28, the date of inauguration, also happens to be the 140th birth anniversary of the highly polarising pro-Hindutva political figure, VD Savarkar, considered a guru by the BJP and its ideological fountainhead, the RSS—a fact not lost on many, and is being considered an insult to Parliament, given the high level of communal intolerance being spewed by the BJP in a country considered the temple of democracy for long.
