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No-confidence motion: who won the political battle?

Jul 21, 2018, 06:20 am IST
surprise hug during no-confidence motion

Yesterday’s no-confidence motion was the first one in 14 years, saw the verbal political battle between the ruling party and the Opposition.

So who won the no-confidence motion?

The Lok Sabha was surprised when Congress President Rahul Gandhi had hugged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the latter shook his hands and patted his back.

While the MPs were stunned at the gesture, PM Modi had capitalized on it, suggesting hat the Congress chief ’s gesture asking him to get up only reflected an unfounded eagerness to assume the high office. “Those who want to reach here in a hurry came here and gestured ‘get up, get up’,” Modi said.

Gesturing with his hands, he mimicked Rahul’s actions, providing more drama to a 12-hour debate that ended with BJP winning the vote by a large margin, its numbers swelling to 325 with 451 votes cast. The opposition scored a sub-par result with its tally reaching 126 as TRS and BJD walked out. The surprise abstention of Shiv Sena was more than made up by the support of AIADMK.  

A combative PM said he would like the opposition to bring another no-confidence motion against him in 2024, implying that BJP was well on its way to returning to office in the Lok Sabha elections next year. He lashed out at Congress, saying its arguments during the no-confidence motion reflected a “deep lack of confidence in itself ”.

READ ALSO: (video)Rahul Gandhi Hugs P.M Modi, Says Modi Cannot Look At his Eyes as Modi Laughs

Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi had called the PM’s speech as “weak”, while former party chief Sonia Gandhi dubbed it as “old rhetoric”.

 Modi, in his speech, had said the Congress party had misused the no-confidence motions to spread instability in the country to ensure that the Gandhi family remains in power. When asked about how was the prime minister’s speech while he was coming out of Parliament, Rahul said it was “weak”. Sonia Gandhi told reporters that the prime minister’s speech was “old rhetoric”.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, the initiator of the no-confidence motion, had called the PM as an arrogant man. “Instead of doing justice to Andhra Pradesh, the prime minister used the debate to politically attack me. He alleges that Opposition is arrogant. It is the prime minister who has arrogance.”

“It is sad to see a man of the stature of the prime minister is talking irresponsibly. The Centre is showing negligence because we don’t have numbers,” Naidu said. 

After the defeat of the no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha, the BJP had tweeted the results on its official Twitter handle.

PM Modi too had thanked and tweeted on the victory:  

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Jul 21, 2018, 06:20 am IST

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