Smriti Irani must exercise restraint

Human resources development minister Smriti Irani could have done herself and her party a big favour had she conducted herself without hysteria in the Lok Sabha last Thursday while replying to the debate on the issue rocking the nation — the suicide of the dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad which has got mixed up in the public discourse with the highly regrettable unleashing of the might of the state against a clutch of JNU students for being “anti-national” and being slapped with the charge of “sedition”.

While shedding any sense of dignity or restraint on the floor of Parliament in presenting the government’s case in her capacity as a Union Cabinet minister, it transpires that Ms Irani also built much of her diatribe against the Opposition parties on a string of untruths. This has led to calls for her resignation from members of the public in Hyderabad, more pertinently from the late research scholar’s mother who held a press conference to make her point.

The spectacular deviation from the truth by the minister on the floor of the House lends itself to scrutiny as regards the question of breach of privilege of Parliament. Considering that the building blocks of Ms Irani’s glib argument and political harangue to shield her ministry and the government from public ire were flimsy, and appear to derive from marked falsehoods, the HRD minister must squarely take responsibility for her singularly shoddy performance.

She is a greenhorn in her parliamentary career and was still given a top Cabinet post although she lost her Lok Sabha election. This is suggestive of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s baffling magnanimity towards her. Even so, it is hard to see how a government can have a minister who takes recourse to wilful inaccuracies.

In the ordinary course a Prime Minister mindful of his constitutional duty should withdraw from the council of ministers such a brash colleague who lowers the dignity of the government, if regard for parliamentary morality has not been lost altogether in these “chalta hai” times. In light of this it was intriguing to find Prime Minister Narendra Modi reportedly re-tweet his HRD minister’s speech along with the legend “Satyamev Jayate (the truth will triumph)”.

Apart from Ms Irani’s misconceived intervention in the tragic Hyderabad matter, her decision to bring up Goddess Durga in a controversial and tasteless manner in order to take pot-shots at a highly rated university such as JNU can hardly enhance her reputation for maturity.

None of this augurs well for the Budget Session of Parliament. When the ruling side whips out the blunderbuss right at the start of such an important time in the parliamentary calendar, it suggests that the government is unconcerned whether the Parliament runs or not.