TMC attacks government for ignoring Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi in President's address

NEW DELHI: Trinamool Congress today attacked the government for ignoring the name of leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru from the President's address to Parliament and said naming of schemes after BJP leaders who do not enjoy national stature was inappropriate.

Raising the issue in the Lok Sabha during the discussion on the Motion of Thanks on the President's address, TMC leader Sougata Roy demanded a scheme to be named after Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

He said BJP named schemes after its leaders like Deen Dayal Upadhyay and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee who "do not enjoy stature of national leaders."

Roy also attacked the Sangh for its chief Mohan Bhagwat's remarks that conversion was the main objective of Mother Teresa's service. "The Law Minister was here. He had said he is proud of his RSS links. Is he still proud?"

Referring to the killing of former MP Ahsan Jafri in the Gujarat riots to attack Modi, the TMC leader said "he was killed just a kilometre from the CM's office. The CM is now our PM."

He said he would not counter the speeches of BJP members Anurag Thakur and Nishikant Dubey during the debate as they have "ministerial ambitions" and are trying hard for an accommodation in the council of ministers in the next reshuffle.

Bhratruhari Mahtab of BJD said Mahatma Gandhi's name was mentioned in the penultimate paragraph of the speech.

Attacking the government, he said the Prime Minister's cleanliness drive was nothing but a "photo opportunity".

"There is no content in the government...PM is like a film actor. It is not a PM's work," he said.

Taking a dig at the ambitious Jan Dhan scheme, he claimed people opened bank accounts hoping that the government would deliver on its promise of transferring Rs 15 lakh per household of the blackmoney it recovers from abroad.

Asking BJP to "introspect", he said Delhi would perhaps be the only state where a party's MPs are more than its MLAs. BJP had swept all the seven Lok Sabha seats in the general elections but managed only three in the 70-member Delhi assembly.