Parties pay salutations to Constitution, 'growing intolerance' ringtone of the debate

NEW DELHI: The Lok Sabha debate saw parties joining hands to pay salutations to the Constitution, its framer BR Ambedkar and other stalwarts of the Constituent Assembly, but the Opposition voices against 'growing intolerance' was unmistakably the political ringtone of the day-long deliberations, with PM Modi listening to it most of the time. He is scheduled to speak on Friday.

Sonia Gandhi, Trinamool Congress’ Sudip Bandyopadhyay, BJD’s Tathagata Satpathy and many others referred to incidents of intolerance and demanded the government, especially the prime minister, take effective steps to stop them.

Home minister Rajnath Singh asserted the NDA regime was committed to the Constitution and said every Indian, irrespective of their religion and caste will enjoy equal rights. Shiv Sena’s Anadrao Adsul defended the government and the PM and lashed out at the Congress for twice fielding candidates to defeat Ambedkar in the Lok Sabha polls after he quit the Congress.

Bandyopadhyay said the PM should clearly send out a reassuring message to the people from Parliament rather than limiting himself to speaking on the issue on foreign soil.

Satpathy said every Indian had an equal right under the Constitution, demanded equal status to all non-Hindi regional languages and underlined the need to respect different faiths and sensitivities. Responding to Singh’s earlier remarks that Modi was the only PM who highlighted the importance of sanitation and how he wielded a broom to send out a larger social message, Satpathy said even the King of Puri used to clear the way for the Lord’s rath and his own mother, former chief minister Nandini Satpathy, used to personally wield the broom to clean the house, without giving publicity to it.