Spending nearly a thousand crore rupees on a new Parliament building while people struggle after losing jobs and incomes in the Covid period is itself a challenge to the people

I saw the news that the Prime Minister is laying the foundation stone for the new Parliament building today. When the country faces a severe economic crisis, there is no need at all to build a new Parliament building at a cost of nearly a thousand crore rupees.

The present Parliament building has extensive facilities and is safe. When the views of party leaders were sought on building a new one, I said, as the CPI(M)'s leader in the Rajya Sabha, that the new building should be dropped. That must be why the Prime Minister is laying the foundation stone today without informing any of us. What Narendra Modi is laying the foundation for today is not his own house but the Parliament building of India. The Prime Minister's stand in laying the foundation stone without even informing the opposition parties deserves protest.

The Parliament building is called the sanctum sanctorum of Indian democracy. Under BJP rule the country is watching it become a slaughterhouse of democracy. You who are destroying parliamentary democracy itself, giving no room for discussion or dissenting voices, what value have you given this Parliament building beyond its being a mere building?

Those who carved up a state in a single day, who rewrote all the country's labour laws without discussion, who passed the farm laws by throwing out and suppressing those who protested, who do not hesitate to do anything in the arrogance of power: it is they who are building a new Parliament building for the country today.

What the people of India need is not dazzling buildings or empty promises, but food and jobs. Spending nearly a thousand crore rupees on a new Parliament building while people struggle after losing jobs and incomes in the Covid period is itself a challenge to the people.

Com. Elamaram Kareem