Abhijit Ray, Kolkata: Insult to the President of India! Ahead of the inauguration of the new Parliament building, the opposition is once again united on the issue. As many as 20 other political parties have announced to ‘boycott’ the inauguration ceremony as shown by Tmc chief Mamata Banerjee. Congress, Samajwadi Party, DMK, CPI(M) are not on the list. On Wednesday morning, 19 parties, including the TMC, issued a joint statement in this regard. In the afternoon, telangana’s ruling BRS and Sharad Pawar’s NCP separately announced a boycott of the event.As a result, the Modi government is now virtually clueless about the inauguration ceremony. However, only four parties have stood by the Centre — the Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab, the YSRCP in Andhra Pradesh, the Anna DMK in Tamil Nadu and the BJD in Odisha. They will be present at the opening ceremony. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the new Parliament building on Sunday.The Lok Sabha Secretariat is the main organiser of the event. Despite this, the country’s first tribal woman president Draupadi Murmu was not invited. The opposition has been protesting the issue since the beginning. Fingers have also been pointed at Modi. On Tuesday, the TMC, then cpi and AAP announced a boycott of the inauguration ceremony of the new parliament building. Others announced the same today. As a result, Modi is on the back foot on tribal issues ahead of elections in five states.Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram will go to polls later this year. Of the total 679 assembly seats in the five states, 149 are tribal-dominated constituencies. Also, the Lok Sabha elections will be played as the year progresses. The Prime Minister is under tremendous nervousness in the situation. Modi and his managers are digging their heads into damage control in the face of the opposition’s ‘boycott strategy’. Draupadi Murmu hails from Odisha, so speculations were rife about what Naveen Patnaik would do.However, they are angry that the President has not received an invitation. From the foundation stone for the construction of the new Parliament building to the inauguration, there have been allegations of Narendra Modi’s dictatorship. The government, however, is desperate to prove itself “liberal”. So two short films have been made on Jawaharlal Nehru and the sacred punishment ‘Sengal’, a symbol of the transfer of power from the British in 1947.Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, handed over the sentence to Nehru through the Hindu priests of Tamil Nadu. At the inauguration ceremony on Sunday, Modi will install the sacred punishment in front of the Lok Sabha Speaker’s podium in the new Parliament.Despite a protest from the opposition party demanding that President Droupadi Murmu should do the honours,, Rahul Gandhi says not inviting her to the ceremony is an “insult”.
