Along with many other issues in the special session of the 18th Lok Sabha, Sengol is also in the news. Today, on Thursday, President Draupadi Murmu, who reached the Parliament to address the joint session of the Parliament, was welcomed with Sengol. As soon as President Murmu reached the gate of the Parliament House, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla were present to welcome her.
Now this Sengol has also become an issue among the opposition MPs in the Parliament. In fact, the Samajwadi Party has demanded to remove the Sengol from the Parliament House and install a copy of the Constitution in its place. The BJP has also hit back at the SP and accused them of disrespecting Indian culture.
Samajwadi Party MP RK Chaudhary demanded the removal of Sengol from the Parliament and said that a copy of the Constitution should be installed in place of Sengol because the Constitution is a symbol of democracy. He said that Sengol means scepter i.e. the king’s stick. RK Chaudhary said that the country is run by the Constitution and not by the king’s stick. He said that he demands the removal of Sengol to save the Constitution.
SP MP from Mohanlalganj in Uttar Pradesh, RK Chaudhary, also wrote a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla in this regard, in which he demanded that ‘Sengol’ should be replaced with the copy of the Constitution.
Speaking to the media, RK Chaudhary said that the adoption of the Constitution marked the beginning of democracy in the country and the Constitution is a symbol of it. He said that the BJP government had installed ‘Sengol’ next to the Lok Sabha Speaker’s chair in its previous term. He said that Sengol is a Tamil word which means scepter. Scepter also means the king’s stick. RK Chaudhary said, “After the era of kings, we have become independent. Now, every man and woman who is an eligible voter chooses the government to run this country. So will the country run by the Constitution or the king’s stick?”
On the other hand, BJP has strongly criticized RK Chaudhary’s comment. BJP spokesperson Shahzad Poonawala said that Samajwadi Party is bent on insulting an integral part of Indian and Tamil culture.
He questioned, “If it was the symbol of the Sengol monarchy, why did the first Prime Minister Nehru accept it? Was he accepting that symbol and the monarchy?”
Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) MP Chirag Paswan also hit back, saying that the Congress and Congress-led governments have always tried to misrepresent historical symbols. He said, “These people cannot do positive politics… these people only do the politics of division.”
Amid this controversy, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said that RK Chaudhary was only trying to point out that Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not bow before Sengol after taking oath in the Lok Sabha. He said, “I think our MP is probably saying this because when Sengol was established, the Prime Minister bowed before it. Maybe he forgot it while taking oath… When the Prime Minister forgot to bow before it, maybe he also wanted something else.”
Tags: Parliament news, Parliament session, Samajwadi Party
FIRST PUBLISHED : June 27, 2024, 13:24 IST