Lok Sabha members at a meeting of the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) told Speaker Om Birla on Thursday to do away with the subsidy on food in the canteen used by Members of Parliament. “There is a wrong impression that MPs enjoy free food. We have asked the Honourable Speaker to end the susbsidy for MPs, but modalities need to be worked out on keeping low rates for the canteens used by Parliament staff,” Congress leader Adhir Chowdhury told The Hindu .
The Congress leader also raised concerns on the issue of fratricide at an ITBP camp in Chhattisgarh, where a jawan killed five of his colleagues and injured two others before killing himself on Wednesday.
Members of the Lok Sabha, cutting across party lines, asked the government to ensure that the bodies of Indians killed in the tanker blast in Sudan are brought back at the earliest and the victims’ families are given adequate compensation.
T.R. Baalu of the DMK, Rajiv Pratap Rudy of the BJP and Selvaraj M of the CPI raised the issue in the House during Zero Hour. Mr. Baalu said as many as six out of the 18 Indians who were killed in the LPG tanker explosion were from Tamil Nadu. The blast was so powerful that it destroyed the ceramic factory where 68 Indian were employed.
Mr. Chowdhury said while such incidents were unheard of in the Navy and the Air Force, the Army had reported similar incidents earlier. He claimed that such incidents were on the rise in the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) and could be “due to lack of facilities.”
Union Minister Nitin Gadkari expressed regret at hurdles like land acquisition and environment clearance faced by various road projects and asserted that the country must have a positive approach.
“Everyone says 'stop the work'. No one says 'do the work'. The country has to have a positive approach and attitude towards development projects,” the Minister said. He claimed that acquiring defence land for road projects was a big challenge.
