One of the 20 political parties that abstained from the official opening of the new Parliament building was Congress. These parties believed that the President, and not the Prime Minister, should have presided over the building’s inauguration. Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Congress, took aim at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday, saying he saw the opening of the new House of Representatives as a coronation. “Parliament is the voice of the people! The Prime Minister is considering the inauguration of the Parliament House as a coronation,” Gandhi mentioned.
One of the 20 political parties that abstained from the opening of the new Parliament building was Congress. These parties contended that the President, not the Prime Minister, should have presided over the building’s inauguration. Additionally, the Congress tweeted two images showing PM Modi as being smaller than former PM Jawahar Lal Nehru. The grand old party asserted that PM Modi “cannot match the personality of Nehru, no matter how hard he tries.”
The Lok Sabha chamber’s antique Sengol was installed earlier in the day by Prime Minister Modi, who also officially opened the new Parliament building. High priests of different adheenams in Tamil Nadu began the event this morning with havan in the midst of Vedic hymns. The prime minister performs “Ganapati Homam ” to ask Gods to bless the opening of the new Parliament building, to the accompaniment of chants of priests from Shringeri Math in Karnataka. With the holy sceptre in his grasp, he kneeled before the Sengol and prayed for blessings from high priests. After arriving at the new Parliament building, PM Modi installed the Sengol in a dedicated enclosure on the right side of the Speaker’s chair in the Lok Sabha chamber while leading a procession to the sounds of “nadaswaram” and chanting Vedic mantras.
The NCP of Sharad Pawar and the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) lamented the absence of the President at the new Parliament building’s inauguration on Sunday. The Shiv Sena (UBT) asserted that it was against tradition and procedure to ignore President Murmu during the inauguration of the new Parliament building. As the head of the state, President Droupadi Murmu should perform the honours, some Opposition parties vowed to boycott the ceremony. Using Twitter, Clyde Crasto, the country’s spokesperson for NCP, stated: “We are a Democracy, not a Monarchy. The people of the country must yield Power…It is saddening to see that our president, the constitutional head of our country, is not inaugurating the New Parliament building.”
A new Parliament building, according to the Rajya Sabha member, was not necessary because the current one was in fine condition and drew tourists from all over the world. “History will remember that Rs 20,000 crore were spent unnecessarily for a new Parliament building and the President of India was not even invited,” he wrote in the Marathi daily. A similar argument was made by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who on Saturday said there was no need for a new Parliament building.
