Speech

Delayed Action Caused Carnage : Sonia Gandhi

Address by the Leader of the Opposition, Smt. Sonia Gandhi, to the Congress Parliamentary Party General Body meeting on 16th May, 2002

First of all, I would like to join Paban in expressing my feelings of empathy and support and conveying my condolences to the bereaved families of our colleagues, as well as families in Gujarat, who lost their dear ones under such tragic circumstances and the families of the people like I met yesterday in Jammu.

This has been a historic occasion for all of us. On the 13th we have been privileged to be part of the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of the Lok Sabha. We can take great pride in the fact that it was the Congress and our leaders who laid the foundations of representative parliamentary democracy in our country. We are coming to the end of a turbulent session.

We have lost several days because of the repeated and prolonged refusal of the Government to concede our demands for discussion on vital national issues eventually of course, the Government have had to eat humble pie and accept discussion, but in the meanwhile the House has had to suffer repeated disruptions. The fault of this lies entirely on the door of the Government that knows that it is in the wrong and is running scared. At least that is why it had to be forced to debate specially on issues relating to secularism. On such questions, the BJP is always in a minority. It is only the opportunism of their partners and the side supporters which keeps them going. This is what explains the repeated delays in scheduling debates on flimsy excuses. The Government thus buys time to cajole its members and supporters to give itself space to breath awhile longer. This Government, I believe, is surviving on the life support system and it would be naive of us to expect it to govern.

The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Christina B. Rocca, with the Congress president, Smt. Sonia Gandhi at her recidence on 14 May, 2002

The session has been dominated by the tragedy of Gujarat, which has been a national calamity as well. We firmly believe that normalcy cannot be sustained as long as the present Chief Minister remains in office.

He has betrayed a shocking lack of respect for all Constitutional norms — indeed, for all human values. He has been blatantly partisan and deliberately inflammatory. But he is still there, of course. In the Lok Sabha, I had asked the Government to bring the guilty to book, restore law and order, appoint a sitting Supreme Court Judge to investigate into the violence and ensure that relief and rehabilitation measures are extended to all affected people. None of this, I believe, has really been done.

I had also asked the Government, as Pranabji and Dr. Manmohan Singh and my colleagues in the Rajya Sabha had asked the Government to put the Gujarat Government on notice under Article - 355 of the Constitution for having failed to control the situation. While the Government vehemently opposed all this in the Lok Sabha, they did a complete turn around and supported a motion for intervening effectively under Article - 355 in the Rajya Sabha. This only simply underlines the fact that the main objective of the Government has really been political expediency rather than a desire to bring peace and harmony to the people of Gujarat. This is also further confirmed by the fact that after having supported a motion for intervening under the same Article, the Government has done precious little in this direction. Even so, the task of reconstruction and reconciliation has to commence. The dangerous polarization of Gujarat has to be reversed and our glorious tradition of religious tolerance and social harmony has to be restored.

This will require both civic and political action in which we will have to play a very active role. Of course, we will also have to prepare ourselves for the crucial Vidhan Sabha elections but in my view even more important is to bring people together, to unite them, to break down mutual suspicions to overcome mutual hatred and apply the healing touch all-around.

We had also the Joint Sitting on POTO, which is now POTA. My clear impression was that it was an occasion which only diminished the dignity of this rare provision in our Constitution. The law was passed not on the basis of thought or conscience, but on the basis of numbers. We have all made our position clear — that existing laws would be sufficient and there would be no requirement for a law that directly suppresses the human rights of our people.

We have had an uninspiring and directionless Budget. I think, it will do very little to revive growth nor generate a new investor momentum. We are very extremely concerned at the way our financial institutions are being managed or more accurately mis-managed. The way cooperative banks and provident funds have been misused recently in another scam raises very many disturbing questions.

The tax administration at the highest levels has been rocked by corruption. We have raised our voice over this extremely rapid deterioration where integrity and efficiency appear to be at a deep discount. This, of course, we shall continue to do so both in the House and outside Parliament.

The economy too is in a mess. The momentum imparted by the Congress Government repose to the growth process has been frittered away. In fact, the contrast between the first five-year phase of reforms and the second clearly establishes that the fault lies not in the reforms but in those who are administrating reforms. Not only have rates of growth of GDP and other sectoral indicators fallen, but problems of poverty, distribution and unemployment have grown manifold. Achievements under poverty, distribution and unemployment have grown manifold. Achievements under poverty alleviation and rural development schemes have also deteriorated rapidly.

There has been a debate on foreign affairs in the Rajya Sabha. Never before has the international image of India sunk so low and never before has the international prestige of our country been so damaged.

There has been unprecedented troop mobilization on our western borders, for almost five months now. We would like the Government to take the people into confidence about its long-term strategy. Now full six months after the audacious terrorist attack on our Parliament, our nation has not been able to heave a single sigh of relief about the threat of cross-border terrorism. In fact, it was only two days back that Pakistan trained militants mounted a brutal terrorist attack in Jammu in which so many people, many of whom women and children, were massacred. I paid a visit there only yesterday and those heart-rending images are still haunting me. All our hearts go out in sympathy to the bereaved families of both civilians and our jawans. Whenever, such shocking incidents occur, the leaders of our government routinely indulge in tough talking and sabre-rattling. What is however needed is a comprehensive strategy for countering this menace of terrorism. The co-option of the world’s primary terrorist state, Pakistan, a principal ally in the global way on terrorism has left us as vulnerable to terrorism as ever. I believe, we had better learnt to rely on ourselves to counter this threat.

Just a few days back, there were reports of a breakthrough in the peace talks with Naga separatist groups. There has been no official statement on these developments in Parliament so far. We, in the Congress Party welcome any initiative that brings peace to Nagaland and that brings militants and separatists back on the path of peace as was done in Mizoram. But we still advise caution and restraint so that any peace agreement with Naga groups should not be at the cost of other states in the North East, for instance, like Manipur. We are all aware of what happened when our brother and sisters in Manipur felt that the Central Government was entering into a peace deal that would affect the territorial integrity of that State. This issue requires great skill, tact and sensitivity in handling.

During the break in this session in the second week of April, all our 14 Chief Ministers met in Guwahati. We had a most useful interaction on many of the key programmes and schemes launched by our states in different areas like decentralization, education, rural development, watershed management, housing, administrative reforms, social welfare and employment. The Chief Ministers also adopted what we call a Guwahati Resolve, a copy of which, I hope you have all seen and if you are interested in it, it is available with Oscar Fernandes at the AICC. This is important because all of you will have to play an important role in projecting the programmes of our Government and in highlighting the accomplishments of the Government. This way we can bring our Party organization and the state governments close together. We have decided that our Chief Ministers and I shall meet regularly to discuss issues relating to governance and development and I would welcome any specific suggestions on how to make these interactions more meaningful and some of the critical areas that you feel are not being tackled effectively by our Government.

Following the Guwahati conclave, I also had occasion to address the CII. I used that opportunity to explain, in some detail, how the Congress’s political ideology, social philosophy and economic policies are fundamentally different from those of the BJP. To the Congress, social harmony and peace is an essential pre-requisite for successful and sustainable economic reforms. I spelt out the difference in detail and I shall spell it out briefly here to our Party.

Next week, of course, on the 24th the AICC will be meeting here in Delhi. That will give us another opportunity to discuss and debate current political, social and economic issues in some detail. Immediately thereafter, we have the assembly elections in Goa, important of course, at all times but now invested with a new significant. I feel fairly confident that we will once again receive a decisive mandate from the people of Goa.

But we cannot take anything for granted and I hope our campaign will be tireless and relentless and I look to you also to help us out in the campaign.

This Session has been a gruelling one. But I think we have been able to call the government to account time and again in both the Houses. We will continue to do so. We will continue to do so; we owe that much to the people of India. Thank you.