New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday lashed out at opposition parties for pursuing their disruption of Parliament politics and asserted that the country cannot be held 'hostage' to such selfishness and politics.
"Yeh log kaise desh heet ke kam roka jae is ki spardha mein lagey haen (These people are leaving no stone un-turned to stall country's progress and development)," Prime Minister said while interacting with beneficiaries of Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana in Uttar Pradesh, via video conferencing.
"This great country and the great people will never be hostage to such politics of selfishness…," he said.
"No amount of efforts they make to stall India's development journey, this country will not stop. They are trying to stall parliament but 130 crore Indians are determined not to allow success to their designs," he said.
In last few weeks, the Prime Minister said while the country was determined and some people were busy achieving "new milestones" in ongoing Tokyo Olympics but there were others in Delhi were "busy sabotaging and stalling parliament"
The Prime Minister's strong remarks came as both the Houses of Parliament continue to be marred by sloganeering and repeated disruption since July 19 when the monsoon session had begun.
Before the start of the session, the government had proposed to pass at least 23 draft laws and some of them crucial ones related to economic reforms.
But after a planned 'sabotage and pandemonium' was orchestrated out as the so called Pegasus spying row was kicked off hours before the session was to commence on July 19.
In two weeks of the session, a total 89 hours of working time of both the Houses have been wasted resulting in draining out of Rs 133 crore of exchequer money.
Sources say till July end, Lok Sabha could transact business of seven hours only out of possible 54 hours, and Rajya Sabha has been allowed to function only for 11 hours out of nearly 53 hours.
In Lok Sabha, it was only 14 percentage productivity and for the House of Elders, the productivity was hardly 22 per cent.
In Rajya Sabha, six Trinamool Congress members were suspended for a day on Wednesday while another member Shantanu Sen was suspended last week for the entire session.
Several efforts to reach out to the opposition parties have also not yielded any positive outcome.
