For those of you who may have missed out on the action on television and other devices, here are some videos of the debate on the three days.
The three-day debate on the Opposition's no confidence motion against the Narendra D Modi government has ended, with no surprises at the outcome.
The Opposition expected nothing different, proved by the fact that it staged a walkout even before the vote was called.
While the outcome of the motion was never in doubt, the debate nevertheless saw a few firsts.
Like the kerfuffle over a kiss albeit of the flying variety, remarks with Bharat Mata being expunged, and more. Oh, before we forget someone even chanted the Hanuman Chalisa in the Lok Sabha, probably another first you think?
For those of you who may have missed out on the action live on TV and other devices, here’s some videos of the debate on the three days.
Rahul Gandhi had missed out on two sessions of Parliament following his disqualification and he got a Supreme Court stay on his conviction just in time to be back in the Lok Sabha for the debate. He was in fact meant to open the debate, but Gaurav Gogoi, who had submitted the notice for no confidence motion, opened the debate on Tuesday.
Rahul spoke on the second day of the debate, and went hammer and tongs at the government over its alleged inaction on Manipur, charging that the government had killed Bharat Mata in Manipur, and calling them not patriots but traitors.
It was a high octane delivery, but alas what caught attention was what happened next (see below).
It was a BJP masterstroke to field Smriti Irani as the speaker after Rahul, and the Union minister for women and child development, who drove away Rahul from the family fiefdom of Amethi to distant Wayanad, began with her usual bluster, all of which soon went into targeting the Congress leader for allegedly blowing a flying kiss as he left the Lok Sabha.
Clearly Manipur was the reason behind the no confidence motion, not to test the government's legislative numbers but to get the government to speak on the north eastern state.
What is unusual about the 100 days of strife in the state was that Modi has refused to speak on it (barring a brief mention on the first day of the monsoon session, but outside Parliament).
So Opposition leader after leader excoriated the prime minister for his silence during the three-day debate.
Now the northeastern state of Manipur has two MPs, one from the BJP and the other from ally NPF.
But rather than fielding them to rebut the Opposition's charges, the BJP fielded its MP from Arunachal Pradesh Kiren Rijiju, the Union minister for earth sciences.
Everybody knows the fraught relations between lawmakers of the two Shiv Senas. While the breakaway group, which had legitimacy conferred on it by no less than the Election Commission, believes the parent group to have jettisoned Hindutva in its pursuit of power and lays claim to founder Bal Thackeray's legacy, Shrikant Shinde, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde's son and MP from Kalyan in the state, decided to chant the sacred verses bang in the middle of the no confidence motion debate.
His point? That the Hanuman Chalisa was not allowed to be chanted during the previous MVA government in the state.
Asaduddin Owaisi is used to being reviled by both the NDA and the INDIA sides, each calling him the other's B-team.
Be that as it may, the AIMIM MP from Hyderabad is using to ploughing a lonely furrow in politics, hoping to some day build on his Muslim vote base to emerge as something more than a gadfly.
Speaking in the Lok Sabha, he raised some pointed questions at both the sides, which he called the chowkidars and the dukandars (referring to the BJP and Congress), which elicited no response from the Treasury benches apart from the usual heckling.
A sigh of relief must have gone up in the BJP headquarters when the Biju Janata Dal announced that they will oppose the Opposition's no confidence motion. For, the BJP may be fighting the BJD in Odisha, but ties between the two are not fractious as it is with the ruling party in the state next door. Whenever the BJP finds itself in a bit of a legislative bother the BJD has been happy to help.
Thus it was that the member of Parliament from Puri, Pinaki Misra, a former Congress leader to boot, spoke on the side of the treasury benches.
Clearly the No 2 in the government, Home Minister Amit A Shah is schooled in the Modi tradition of speechifying. So it was that his intervention in the no confidence motion debate on Wednesday the most keenly watched, both for what he would say, given his proximity to the prime minister, as well as how he would say it.
It was to be expected that Modi, when he replied to the debate on the no confidence motion against his government, would not pull his punches, and he did not in what was also his longest speech to date in Parliament.
While he spent a good time taking potshots at the Opposition INDIA alliance, he saved the best for the Congress party, right from his pet peeve Jawaharlal Nehru down to Rahul Gandhi.
And because he is the prime minister, we are posting a second video of his fusillade below.
