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Oppn against PM inaugurating Parliament. But CMs, party leaders have opened new state assemblies

Former PMs, CMs & party leaders, many of them from Congress which is spearheading Opposition’s protest, have inaugurated state assembly buildings while governors were overlooked.

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to inaugurate the new Parliament building on 28 May. However, 20 Opposition parties have said they will boycott the ceremony.

The Opposition is protesting against the “sidelining” of President Droupadi Murmu who, they say, should have been invited to inaugurate it instead.

However, the central government has cited earlier instances of former prime ministers, chief ministers and party leaders — many of whom are from the Congress which is spearheading the Opposition’s boycott — inaugurating state assembly buildings while the respective governors, the executive head of the state, were overlooked. ThePrint takes a look at some such inaugurations

Most recently, Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan Thursday spoke about how she was not invited to the inauguration of the new secretariat building in Hyderabad on 30 April this year. The building was inaugurated by Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao.

Last year, in November, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee inaugurated the Platinum Jubilee Memorial Building at the West Bengal state assembly in Kolkata instead of the governor. Banerjee’s party has opposed Parliament inauguration by the PM. 

In 2020, Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi had laid the foundation stone of Chhattisgarh’s new Vidhan Sabha Bhawan. 

In 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated Jharkhand’s new assembly building. The state is headed by Jharkhand Mukti Morcha’s Hemant Soren. The party has also opposed the NDA’s move.

In Bihar, it was CM Nitish Kumar — among those who have boycotted the inauguration ceremony of the new Parliament building — and not the governor who inaugurated the central hall of the Bihar legislature in 2019. Three years before that, in 2016, he had inaugurated the supplementary building of the state legislature comprising the assembly and council and the secretariat.

In 2011, then PM Manmohan Singh, along with then Congress president Sonia Gandhi, had inaugurated the new state assembly complex in Manipur’s capital Imphal. A year before that, Singh, again accompanied by Gandhi, had inaugurated the Rs 450 crore-legislative assembly-secretariat complex in Tamil Nadu, the foundation of which was laid by CM Karunanidhi in 2008.

Back in 1981, then Prime Minister and Congress leader, Indira Gandhi, had inaugurated the Maharashtra Vidhan Bhawan in April that year.

The then Prime Minister and also Congress leader, Jawaharlal Nehru had laid the foundation stone of the Karnataka assembly, or Vidhana Soudha, on 13 July 1951. The Suvarna Vidhana Soudha (Belagavi) where the winter session is held, was inaugurated by then President Pranab Mukherjee in 2012 on the invitation of the then BJP government led by Jagadish Shettar in the state.  

Earlier this week, Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said that in 1975, the then PM Indira Gandhi inaugurated the Parliament Annexe, and in 1987 the then PM Rajiv Gandhi inaugurated the Parliament library.

Addressing the media, he said, “If your (Congress) head of government can inaugurate them, why can’t our head of government do the same?”

Responding to him, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said those were subsidiary buildings, and “this is a whole new Parliament”, asking whether the President, who is the head of the Constitution who convenes and prorogues in Parliament, should inaugurate it. 


Also read: ‘Deeply disturbed’: Over 80 former bureaucrats allege BJP govt changing character of service


Where Presidents inaugurated 

The project of the legislative complex of the Rajasthan legislative assembly in Jaipur began in November 1994 and was completed in March 2001. It was inaugurated by then President K.R. Narayanan in 2001

Narayanan had also inaugurated the Niyamasabha Mandiram — Kerala’s assembly building which recently celebrated its silver jubilee — on 22 May 1998.

In March 1981, the then Lok Sabha Speaker Balram Jakhar had laid the foundation stone for a new assembly building in Madhya Pradesh. The building was inaugurated in August 1996 by the then president Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma. 

(Edited by Smriti Sinha)


Also read: Laud Modi govt for bringing Sengol to new Parliament. Now it must make Murmu hand it over too


 

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