Who’s the Pappu now, the Narendra Modi government was asked in Parliament on Tuesday.
Mahua Moitra, Trinamul Congress MP, voiced the question again and again in the Lok Sabha as she flagged the fall in industrial output, the Enforcement Directorate’s dismal conviction rate and the failure of demonetisation to achieve its targets.
“The government and the ruling party coined the term ‘Pappu’. You use it to denigrate and signify extreme incompetence. But the statistics tell us who the actual Pappu is,” the Trinamul MP said in a speech in which she asserted the Opposition’s “inalienable right” to ask questions and reminded the government of its “rajdharma” to hear them.
On Monday, questioned about the slide in the value of the rupee, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had likened the Opposition to “enemies in foreign countries” and said they were jealous the economy was doing so well.
Moitra underlined that the latest data showed that industrial output in October had shrunk 4 per cent to a 26-month low and forex reserves had fallen by $72 billion in under a year.
The MP cited figures provided by the government in Parliament last Friday to underline that almost two lakh people had given up Indian citizenship in the first 10 months of the year.
“This exodus takes the total number of Indians renouncing Indian citizenship under this government in the past 9 years to over 12.5 lakh people,” she said and asked: “Is this the sign of a healthy economic environment or a healthy tax environment?”
An “atmosphere of terror” existed in the country with the sword of the Enforcement Directorate hanging over businesses and Opposition leaders.
“The ruling party buys lawmakers for hundreds of crores and yet members of the Opposition represent 95 per cent of the lawmakers under investigation by the ED,” she said, with no protest from the Treasury benches.
Again citing data given by the government in Parliament, Moitra said the ED had opened 5,422 investigations under the PMLA in 17 years but had convicted only 23 people — a conviction rate of 0.5 per cent.
The ED’s operations were funded with the taxpayer’s money, she reminded the House, and so the people’s representatives had the right to question this incompetence.
Cash is still king six years after the demonetisation, Moitra said, with the currency in circulation having nearly doubled from Rs 18 lakh crore in November 2016 to Rs 32 lakh crore now.
“It requires enormous courage and tenacity to simply stand up here and speak the truth and we are doing it,” the MP said.
“In contrast, the ruling party is moving from one incendiary issue to another, from the division of Bengal into north and south, to the Citizenship Amendment Bill, to releasing convicted lifeterm murderers and rapists just before an election, to openly trying to challenge the judiciary into submission. They somehow keep hoping that they will scare into submission and keep winning power term after term,” she added.
But it wasn’t working, she said, pointing to the three recent elections — Gujarat, Himachal and the municipal corporation in Delhi — of which the BJP won only one. “The president of the ruling party could not hold on to his own home state. Who is the Pappu now?” she asked.
This government makes us believe in every February that this country’s economy is going great guns, Moitra said. “This falsehood flies for 8 to 10 months and the truth comes out limping after it,” she said.
“The finance minister yesterday stood in this House and likened the Opposition to ‘desh ka dushman’. She said that we have ‘jalan ka bhavna’ at India’s growth. “I stand here to tell the Honorable minister wherever she may be, tell this government, the ruling party... it is our inalienable right to ask questions to this government. It is our right to question your incompetence,” she said, as the House listened in silence.
“And it is this government’s rajdharma that should make the Treasury benches sit down and listen to our views and not react like the proverbial ‘khisiyani billi’,” she said.
