Continuous sloganeering and protests by leaders from Andhra Pradesh in the Lok Sabha forced the House to adjourn briefly on Thursday morning. The Lok Sabha resumed the session around 11.45 am and continued its Question Hour, which ended shortly after noon.
The Rajya Sabha, meanwhile, was adjourned till noon minutes after the session began. While Telugu Desam Party leaders raised slogans in the Upper House against the government’s Budget provisions for Andhra Pradesh, the Congress protested against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comments about its leader Renuka Chowdhury on Wednesday, The Indian Express reported.
Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, speaking after the Rajya Sabha reconvened, said Jaitley announced in 2016 that the government would provide a health cover of Rs 1 lakh for economically weak families, but the scheme was “quietly buried” after it did not meet Cabinet approval. “Two years later, the same minister came up with a new scheme with a Rs 5 lakh cover for 10 crore families,” Chidambaram said. “Where will the money come from to fund this?”
Jaitley in the Upper House
Speaking in the Lok Sabha, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley asserted that nobody said during the United Progressive Alliance’s rule that India was the fastest growing economy in the world. “It has only happened now. Data speaks for itself,” he added.
Opposing the capping of the Goods and Services tax rate at 18%, Jaitley said that an equal tax rate could not be levied on items which were luxuries and those which were essentials. “Structural reforms may pose momentary difficulty initially, but in the long run they will prove to be beneficial,” he added.
The finance minister said that demonetisation and the GST had an impact on India’s Gross Domestic Product, but it fell by just 0.4% from 7.1% to 6.7%.
On the Rafale deal, Jaitley said the government could not disclose the detailed cost outlay of the agreement as it would reveal what specific weapons were part of the defence system of the aircraft.
When Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said that the party wanted to know the overall cost and unit cost of the deal, Jaitley retorted, “Ask your party president, why manufacture this issue falsely at the cost of national security?” This led to an uproar in the Lok Sabha.
Jaitley also said that the Congress had introduced the Aadhaar scheme through a draft law, without clarifying the purpose of the unique identity card and its scope. “We looked into the law and put in a full chapter on privacy. We specified in the law, in detail, for what purpose Aadhaar will be used,” he said. “The ones who brought it in have disowned it and challenged it in the court.”
The finance minister also said that the Centre find out a solution to the problem in Andhra Pradesh in the next few days. Autorickshaws and public buses remained off roads in several parts of Andhra Pradesh on Thursday as Left parties called for a state-wide bandh to protest against an “anti-people” Union Budget.
During his speeches in both the Houses on Wednesday, Modi had attacked the Congress and its policies. When he said the Congress took credit for Aadhaar, an idea that according to him was discussed in the Rajya Sabha in 1998 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was prime minister, Congress leader Renuka Chowdhury disrupted his speech with a loud guffaw. Modi responded saying he had not heard such laughter since the Ramayan serial was telecast on Indian television in the late 1980s – a comment that the Congress has been objecting to.
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