CHENNAI: Congress MP and former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor on Monday rued the decline in the quality of debate and proceedings in the Indian Parliament. In a conversation with senior journalist Kaveree Bamzai about India’s Parliamentary proceedings at the ThinkEdu Conclave in Chennai, the Thiruvananthapuram MP said that the BJP-led NDA government gives a sense that the opposition’s views don’t matter. Tharoor said that there was a “complete breakdown of trust and communication” between the government and the opposition, unlike when UPA was in power, where views of opposition leaders was considered even while passing important bills. This had made the Parliament a “disappointing” place to sit and work , given the quality of debate and frequent disruptions, he said. “It fails to give a sense that it is a temple of democracy,” Tharoor said. He also claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi hardly attends Parliament and that questions posed to ministries he is in charge of are answered by the Minister of State (Jitendra Singh). At the start of the conversation with Bamzai, Tharoor went so far to say that he finds interacting with people more rewarding than Parliament. Responding to a question from Bamzai about the new Parliament building, Tharoor said it was akin to a “soulless convention hall” and lacked the character and charm of its predecessor.The ruling party and the opposition should be seen as adversaries who have the nation’s best interests at heart, but in the current charged atmosphere, words like “anti-national” and “treason” were being used for opposition MPs, Tharoor said. “They are being seen as enemies and not adversaries,” he said, referring to the relationship between the ruling party MPs and the opposition. Bamzai chipped in to probe if BJP MPs spoke or expressed their views freely on such issues in private. In response, Tharoor cited examples of how current BJP MPs and even ministers were declining invitations to socialize with opposition colleagues. This wasn’t the case during the UPA rule, he claimed. On the question of disruptions by opposition, Tharoor said that BJP leaders when sitting in the opposition benches argued that it was a legitimate tactic. But the same party after coming to power was bashing disruptions.
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