Four Opposition parties to skip Parliament inauguration, more may follow

New Delhi, May 24 : THE TMC, AAP, CPI(M) and CPI said on Tuesday that they have decided to skip the inauguration of the new Parliament building by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 28, amid indications that more Opposition parties, including the Congress, are likely to boycott the ceremony. Alleging breach of Constitutional propriety, the Opposition parties have argued that President Droupadi Murmu, as the head of Parliament, should have been invited to dedicate the building to the nation instead of Modi. While the Congress is yet to announce its decision officially, party sources said it was likely to stay away too. According to sources, the Opposition parties may issue a joint statement announcing their boycott of the ceremony. The Congress and several other Opposition parties had skipped the foundation-laying ceremony of the new Parliament building in December 2020 too. The TMC and AAP announced their decisions to boycott the inauguration ceremony on a day Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal met his West Bengal counterpart, Mamata Banerjee, in Kolkata to seek her support against the Centre's ordinance on control of administrative services in the capital. Banerjee assured that her party would oppose the related Bill in Parliament. “Parliament is not just a new building; it is an establishment with old traditions, values, precedents and rules — it is the foundation of Indian democracy. PM Modi doesn't get that. For him, Sunday's inauguration of the new building is all about I, me, myself. So count us out,” tweeted TMC's Rajya Sabha floor leader Derek O'Brien. The party's Rajya Sabha MP, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, said that apart from being “unparliamentary”, it was also “indecent”. “The BJP is directly insulting the President who is also a woman and a Scheduled Tribe. The building is also not completed yet, so what explains this hurry for the inauguration? Is this because May 28 happens to be the birthday of (V D ) Savarkar,” he said. AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said that “not inviting” Murmu was a “gross insult to her” as well as the “Dalits, tribals and deprived sections of the country”. “Aam Aadmi Party will boycott the inauguration programme, in protest against Modiji not inviting her,” he tweeted. CPI general secretary D Raja told the sources that there was an “overwhelming consensus” among the Opposition parties to boycott the ceremony. “The government must recognise the fact that the President is the head of the State, not the Prime Minister, who is the head of the government,” he said. “How can we associate with such an endeavour that sidelines the President of India and links itself with the memory of Savarkar? Those who cherish the values of parliamentary democracy and secularism can only keep away from this majoritarian adventurism,” tweeted CPI Rajya Sabha member Binoy Viswam. In a series of tweets, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury termed the “bypassing” of the President as “unacceptable”. Earlier in the day, hitting back at the Congress, Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said that former PM Indira Gandhi had inaugurated the Parliament Annexe on October 24, 1975, and former PM Rajiv Gandhi had laid the foundation of the Parliament Library on August 15, 1987. In a series of tweets, Puri said the Congress lacks “national spirit and sense of pride in India's progress”. “Why can't they just join the nation in celebrating this creation of a valuable asset for posterity, as the New India's temple of the mother of all democracies & jettison the prolonged sulk & indulgence in partisan polemics based on falsehoods,” he tweeted. “From criticising the new Parliament building & questioning its very necessity despite many of them advocating for it before but not executing it, Congress president & other worthies are now shifting the goalpost by generously misquoting an article a day from the Constitution,” he said. Countering Puri, Jairam Ramesh, AICC general secretary in-charge, communications, tweeted: “…there is a fundamental difference between inaugurating an annexe where officials work and a library which is hardly used on the one hand, and inaugurating not just the Temple of Democracy but its garbhagriha (sanctum sanctorum) itself”. While then PM Indira Gandhi inaugurated the Parliament House Annexe in 1975, the foundation stone for the building was laid by then President, V V Giri, on August 3, 1970, according to a publication titled ‘Parliament House Estate' released by the Lok Sabha Secretariat in May 2014. For the Parliament Library building, then PM Rajiv Gandhi laid the foundation stone in 1987, and the bhoomi pujan was performed by then Lok Sabha Speaker Shivraj V Patil on April 17, 1994, the Lok Sabha publication said.