Long before Prime Minister Narendra Modi, there was PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, whose primary identity was that of an outstanding parliamentarian. Elected to Lok Sabha a remarkable 10 times, hurling speech after thundering speech, taking opposition attacks on the chin, when Vajpayee was PM it was sometimes so difficult to get him out of the House, that government files had to be taken to his Parliament office.
Vajpayee followed the example of his self-confessed role model, Jawaharlal Nehru, the original parliamentarian-PM who not only attended Parliament almost every day but prepared painstaking replies to all questions directed at him. Nehru and Vajpayee would have recoiled in horror at the Modi government’s recent decision to virtually abandon a long established parliamentary tradition Read More
