Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Wednesday alleged that the words 'secular' and 'socialist' were missing from the Preamble in the copies of the Constitution given to lawmakers on the opening day of the new Parliament building.
However, Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said the copies carried the original version of the Preamble of the Constitution and that these words were added later to it after constitutional amendments.
"This is as per the original Preamble. Amendments were made later," he asserted.
Terming the matter as serious, Chowdhury said the words have been 'cleverly removed' and expressed doubts over the intentions of the Bharatiya Janata Party government.
"The Preamble of the Constitution in the copy that we carried to the new building does not include the words secular and socialist. They have been cleverly removed...this is a serious matter and we will raise this issue," he told reporters.
Chowdhury said he knows that the words were added later in 1976 to the Constitution.
"For me this is a serious issue. I doubt their intentions as their heart does not seem to be clear on this," he said.
The Congress Leader of the House in Lok Sabha also said that if someone gives a copy of the Constitution today, it should carry the version of it as of today.
Binoy Viswam of the Communist Party of India termed the omission of the words as a 'crime'.
Several opposition MPs, including those from the Left and other parties, are likely to raise the matter at their meeting.
The Nationalist Congress Party charged that the alleged deletion of words 'socialist' and 'secular' from the Preamble in the copies of the Constitution presented to MPs on the opening day of the new Parliament building showed the 'biased mindset' of the ruling BJP.
In a statement, Sharad Pawar-led NCP's spokesperson Clyde Crasto said, "The BJP government says that this printed text was the original Preamble. If BJP does not want to respect the constitutional amendment of the Preamble and wants to follow the original, then why have they moved out from the original 'Temple of Democracy', the old Parliament building? Why did they not stay in the original one?"
Removing the words 'socialist' and 'secular' is truly a display of BJPs biased mindset, he alleged.
"The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) should stop fooling the people of India with their absurd replies because people know what they are trying to really achieve," Crasto said.
