NEW DELHI, 28 May: Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the new Parliament building Sunday morning.
Dressed in traditional attire, Modi walked into the Parliament premises from its Gate No 1 and was welcomed by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.
Amid Vedic chants by priests from Karnataka’s Shringeri Math, the prime minister performed ‘Ganapati Homam’ to invoke gods to bless the inauguration of the new Parliament building.
The prime minister prostrated before the ‘Sengol’ and sought blessings from high priests of various adheenams in Tamil Nadu with the holy sceptre in hand.
Modi then carried the ‘Sengol’ in a procession amid tunes of ‘nadaswaram’ and chanting of Vedic mantras to the new Parliament building and installed it in a special enclosure on the right side of the speaker’s chair in the Lok Sabha chamber.
Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, S Jaishankar and Jitendra Singh, chief ministers of several states, and BJP president JP Nadda was present on the occasion.
The prime minister felicitated some workers who played key roles in the construction of the new Parliament building.
‘Self-glorifying, authoritarian’ PM: Cong
The Congress on Sunday launched a scathing attack on Modi after he inaugurated the new Parliament building, saying that a “self-glorifying authoritarian PM with utter disdain for parliamentary procedures” has opened the new complex.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said, “On this day, May 28th, Nehru, the person who did the most to nurture Parliamentary democracy in India, was cremated in 1964. Savarkar, the person whose ideological ecosystem led to the killing of Mahatma Gandhi, was born in 1883.”
Ramesh said also that on this day President Droupadi Murmu – the first Adivasi to become president – is not allowed to fulfil her constitutional duties and inaugurate the new Parliament building.
“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,” he said.
Several opposition parties boycotted the event, contending that the president, not the PM, should have inaugurated the new Parliament building. (PTI)