DMK accuses govt of imposing Hindi and Sanskrit, pushing regional biases | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Opposition MPs in Rajya Sabha on Monday accused the govt of attacking the federal structure, encouraging regional discrimination and undermining constitutional principles, pointing out that just celebrating Constitution Day is not enough.
Participating in the discussion on 75 years of the Indian Constitution, DMK‘s Tiruchi Siva accused the govt of imposing Hindi and Sanskrit and pushing regional biases, which are against the spirit of the Constitution. He said while there is no explicit term for federalism in the Preamble of the Constitution, the first line says “Bharat, that is India, is a union of states”.
Siva said states have been weakened in the recent times, while accusing that the recent laws enacted have either usurped states’ or transgressed them. He said devolution of funds to Tamil Nadu by the Centre has been declining. “For every one rupee that we contribute, we get only 0.29 rupees. Tamil Nadu is performing very well, but we are being victimised by the govt,” he said. Siva also expressed concern over the condition of religious as well as lingual minorities.
On the govt’s thrust on Hindi, the MP said, “Wherever we go, we only see Sanskrit, Hindi letters… The Eighth Schedule of the Constitution has 22 languages, no language should dominate others.” He asked the govt why it was giving Hindi or Sanskrit titles to legislation while the Constitution specifies that English remains the official language.
Siva also pointed out that the govt must take necessary steps to ensure that “not even an iota of doubt should creep into the minds of linguistic and religious minorities”.
BJD’s Debashish Samantaray alleged that constitutional watchdogs have been converted into “pet-dogs”, and raised how chief ministers were put in jail and denied bail. “There is definitely an Emergency in the country, I will say it openly,” he said.
Each of the Trinamool Congress MPs spoke on one subject of the Preamble. While Saket Gokhale spoke about “Justice” to target govt, Dola Sen spoke on “We the people” to corner the Centre while highlighting suffering of migrant labourers during the Covid-19 lockdown, people losing lives in queues at ATMs and banks after demonetisation, unpaid dues of MGNREGA workers in West Bengal and farmers.
Gokhale said the rapists of Bilkis Bano were released by this govt while many including Umar Khalid and Khalid Saifi are in jail for speaking against the govt. “Our PM loves to talk about the previous govt… the way he destroyed the Constitution in 10 years, the previous govts could not do in 70 years,” he said.