Kuchh din to bitaiye Gujarat main Advanji!

Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘Kuchh din to bitaiye Gujarat mein’ campaign is now somewhat forgotten. But yesterday it just popped in my mind when I found that our Gandhinagar MP Lal Krishna Advani was not present in the meeting of Members of Parliament elected from Gujarat. I don’t have access to Advani dada, otherwise I really want to tell him with smile: ‘Kuchh din to bitaiye Gujarat mein’.

Advani dada owns bungalow in Gujarat’s Neta and Babu log’s town Gandhinagar, but that bungalow according to my knowledge was lastly used only for his Lok Sabha election campaign by his family.

Total days of Advani’s visits to Gujarat during his any five-year tenure will not be more than 20 to 30. So he is our dear visitor MP.

Has Advani asked some question regarding Gujarat in Lok Sabha recently? No way, he has not asked any question in this term of parliament. Advani participates in parliament debates sometime on national issue, but never about Gujarat, at least in this term according to my knowledge.

Another notable person absent in yesterday’s meeting was our Vakil saheb Arun Jaitley. Jaitley is elected from Gujarat and he is the leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha. He must be busy in some Zaroori kaam in Dilli.

But do Modi’s once-a-year meeting to discuss pending issues with centre actually serves any purpose? Such meetings ofcourse make Gujarat MPs aware about Gujarat’s issues with centre, and provide them some supportive material in print, but then there is lacking of elaborate discussion or interaction. Almost entire media fraternity rightly highlighted how Gujarat’s 67 pending issues with centre were discussed in only 120 minutes. One of the participants in the meeting told DeshGujarat that it was a token meeting. Such meeting is held once every year.

I couldn’t confirm whether similar meetings were held by Modi saheb’s government when BJP lead NDA was ruling Shining India. Perhaps the answer is ‘No’, because as there was same party rule in the state and the centre, the Sansad route was perhaps not needed(so what if Ahmedabad didn’t become Karnavati due to Advani’s official refusal, and Narmada couldn’t become national project). Now Gujarat Congress MPs can say exactly this. And actually they are saying that they are aware about issues of Gujarat, and they can put up those issues in suitable forum at Navi Delhi without raising them in Sansad. However while stating so, Gujarat Congress should understand that it is not the ruling party in Gujarat, and therefore it is necessary that they participate in a meeting called by state government to be aware about the inter governmental pending issues.

Now coming to our Sansad Sabhyas, the last Parliament session was completely wasted in protests by the opposition, and adamant stand of the ruling party. But before that there was a normal session in which I continuously monitored what questions were being asked in relation to Gujarat, and what was discussed about our pyaru state. You will be surprised to know that though central Civil Aviation minister Praful Patel shamefully broke his publicly given promise to start Amdavad-London international flight just few days back, none of the Gujarat MPs raised any question in this regard! Even in last session, there was ample chance to ask written question, but none of our Gujarati MPs did so. On the contrary the MPs of Punjab raised a question on discontinuation of Punjab-Canada flight effectively, and MPs of southern India didn’t miss an opportunity to attack Praful Patel for discontinuation of some flights from their states.