New Delhi: The Rajya Sabha is not obstructing legislative business but performing its mandate under the constitution to ascertain whether laws are beneficial for the people, said Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad.
Speaking at ‘Manthan’, a conclave organised by private TV channel Aaj Tak, Azad said: “We are doing in Rajya Sabha what the upper house is supposed to do.”
“The government does not want to listen to the opposition… In democracy that is the right of the opposition. If that is not happening in the Lok Sabha, if the government is misusing its power, we have to check it,” Azad said.
“The Rajya Sabha must remove the shortcomings in the legislations,” he said.
“If only Lok Sabha was important, the Rajya Sabha would not have been created,” he said adding that the Rajya Sabha is elected by the elected representatives and thus has a double-responsibility.
“Rajya Sabha members are elected by MLAs. Our responsibility is double, towards the MLAs and towards the people who elected them,” he said.
On Rahul Gandhi’s new avatar in the Lok Sabha, the minister said: “The message from the Congress is that if we are running the government, we are responsible and it is the same when we are in the opposition.”
Asked about the achievements of the Narendra Modi government in the last one year, the Congress leader said: “If we talk about ‘achche din’, is it for the 125 crore people or for ‘I, me and myself’?”
He also accused the government of slashing funds for social programmes.