PRESS TRUST OF INDIA|
New Delhi, Dec 14 |15: With the winter session of Parliament headed for a wash out, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has invoked Jawaharlal Nehru’s legacy to remind the Congress leadership of the responsibility that comes with being lawmakers. In an obvious reference to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul, Mr Jaitley writes in a Facebook post, “Those who claim the legacy of Pandit ji must ask themselves the question, what kind of history are they making.” Mrs Gandhi’s husband and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was Nehru’s elder grandson. Slamming the Congress for changing reasons for stalling parliament “by the hour,” Mr Jaitley writes, “The last Session of the Parliament did not function. The current Session of the Parliament is also threatened with a wash out.” Time is running out for the Goods and Services Tax Bill. If the bill is not passed in the Rajya Sabha by December 23 – the last day of this session – it will miss the April 1 deadline for implementing the tax regime. He said the country is waiting for Parliament to “discuss public issues, to legislate and approve a historic Constitution Amendment enabling the GST.” “All this is being indefinitely delayed. The question we need to ask ourselves is, “are we being fair to ourselves and this country?” Referring to a speech by the first prime minister on the last day of the first Lok Sabha in 1957, which he writes is a ‘must read’, Mr Jaitley quotes a para from the speech to stress his point. “Here, we have sat in this Parliament, the sovereign authority of India, responsible for the governance of India. Surely, there can be no higher responsibility or greater privilege than to be a member of this sovereign body which is responsible for the fate.
