All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Wednesday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for inviting seers for the inauguration of parliament complex.
“PM took people of only one religion inside the New Parliament building (during inauguration). He should have taken people of all religions as he is the PM of 130 crore people of India and not only of Hindus”, the Hyderabad MP said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday unveiled the new parliament complex amid Vedic chants by priests from Shringeri Mutt of Karnataka. Modi performed ‘Ganapati Homam’ to invoke gods to bless the ceremony. He prostrated before the ‘Sengol’ and sought blessings from high priests of various adheenams in Tamil Nadu.
The prime minister carried the ‘Sengol’ in a procession amid tunes of ‘nadaswaram’ and chanting of the mantras to the new parliament complex and installed it on the right side of the Speaker’s chair in the Lok Sabha chamber.
Owaisi had then criticised the PM for taking Hindu priests during the ceremony. “The opening of new Parliament building happened. I saw on TV, Prime Minister was going inside the Parliament and 18-20 Hindu pujaris are following him (inside the Parliament) chanting mantras. Prime Minister, you took only the Hindu pujaris. Why did the Prime Minister not take Christian pastor, Muslim maulana and religious leaders of other religions inside (the new Parliament)?”, he had said.
Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar had also opposed the religious rituals during the inauguration ceremony. “There is a huge difference between the country’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru talking about the concept of modern India and a series of rituals performed at the new Parliament building today in New Delhi. I fear that we are taking our country backward by decades”, he had said.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh had tweeted,“A self-glorifying authoritarian Prime Minister with utter disdain for Parliamentary procedures, who rarely attends Parliament or engages in it, inaugurates the New Parliament building in 2023. 5. Fabrication of facts by Distorians and the drum-beating of the media hits new lows in 2023.”