There came mixed reaction on President Pratibha Patil’s address to the joint sitting of Parliament on Monday, as ruling Congress claimed, the speech clearly outlined the government priorities, while the Opposition slammed it “disappointing”. They claimed that the speech only “outlined the problems” leaving people to guess for the “solutions”.
Refuting the criticism made by the opposition parties on the speech, AICC spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said, the President has “clearly outlined” the government’s priorities to fight “corruption, inflation and other problems” confronting the nation. Main Opposition BJP, the Left parties and TDP, however, slammed the presidential address claiming that it was not up to their expectations, as only old promises were repeated on which the government had already failed to deliver. The speech also lacked clarity on solutions to problems like corruption, they added.
“President Pratibha Patil only read out para by para the problems people of India are confronting with — be it corruption, price rise, black money, anomalies in PDS or internal security... The speech was not up to our expectations... We are basically disheartened after hearing her speech,” deputy leader of BJP in Rajya Sabha S.S. Ahluwalia said.
Alleging that the government was lacking transparency, Mr Ahluwalia said, BJP was expecting “solutions” to these problems but these were not mentioned in the address. “While the President mentioned price rise, corruption, black money and other issues, she has not told us about any solution to the problems in her speech. She has given only one assurance that my government is committed. But committed to what we do not know,” the BJP leader said.
Claiming that the President only repeated the assurances given by her government last year, as these had not yet been fulfilled, CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat said, “This reflects the utter failure of the government to implement the measures announced a year ago.”
Echoing the sentiment expressed by the senior partner in the left front, CPI too criticised the Presidential address, saying the priorities listed were actually a “list of government’s failures” and “lacks any conviction or confidence to move forward”. “The priorities of the government as listed is a list of the government’s failure on all these counts,” CPI national secretary D. Raja alleged. Moreover, TDP too said there was nothing new in the Presidential Address and it was a “repeat” of the old speeches.