New Delhi: Displaying the same conciliatory approach which he had shown in the Lok Sabha last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday sought cooperation from MPs of the Rajya Sabha for passage of the GST and other legislation in the Upper House considering the “conducive atmosphere” that has prevailed in Parliament this session with cooperation from the Opposition.
He, however, did not forget to attack the Congress and invoked the image of “death” to take pot-shots at the Opposition during his reply to the motion of thanks to the President’s address, and said that the grand old party, like death, never gets any blame.
“Death has a blessing. It never gets blamed for anything. If somebody dies, the blame goes to reasons like cancer, age. Death itself is never blamed or defamed. I feel that Congress also has this blessing... It never gets the blame,” he said.
Modi invokes Indira to take on congress in Rajya Sabha
During his speech, prime minister Narendra Modi invoked the late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s words to say that the Rajya Sabha is a chamber of ideas. “I hope we give importance to Pandit Nehru’s thinking and I hope all pending bills are passed in this session,” he said.
“We have been running Parliament this session smoothly. For this, I would thank the Opposition for carrying forward the President’s message. The impact of the President’s message is a matter of pride for us,” he added.
He targeted the Congress for claiming ownership of the schemes of his government by quoting Indira Gandhi as saying, “There are two kinds of people in the world — one who works and another who takes credit for it... You try to belong to the first category because there is little competition in it. This has been said by Indiraji.”
