Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu said on Saturday that it does not matter how many days Parliament sat but what matters is how many days it functioned.
His remarks come a day after the dates for Parliament’s Winter Session were announced following Opposition’s criticism of the government for the delay.
The Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs (CCPA) headed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh met in New Delhi on November 24 to decide the dates of the Winter Session. The CCPA recommended that the session be held from December 15 to January 5.
Speaking at a literary festival Mr. Naidu said that the debate on the freedom of speech and expression should go on.
“How many days the Parliament sat doesn’t matter, what matters is how many days it functioned,” he said.
Mr. Naidu said that the philosophy of life should revolve around “character, calibre, compassion and conduct and not caste, community and cash.”
Stressing that literature was the backbone of the society, he said that it mirrors its inner workings, its triumphs and challenges, its anxieties and its possibilities.
“From Kalidasa to Premchand, from Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore to present day, India has always been blessed with a strong literary lineage of writers, poets, intellectuals and thinkers, who have chronicled times, exemplified our open traditions,” he said.
The Vice-President also said that India is the world’s youngest country of its size, and new intellectual churning and questioning, new ideas about society, politics, citizens’ activism and youth power are its exciting new features.
