New Delhi, December 12
Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi today raised the crucial issue of the air pollution in the LS. In his address, he said, “The most of our major cities are living under a blanket of poisonous air. Millions of children are getting lung diseases, their future is being destroyed. People are getting cancer. Older people are struggling to breathe. This is an interesting issue because I am certain that there will be full agreement between the government and us on this issue. This is not an ideological issue, this is… everybody in this House would agree that air pollution… the damage it is doing to our people is something that we would like to co-operate on.”
Continuing his speech, Gandhi further said, “I think it’s important that the government develops a plan for how to get rid of air pollution in our cities. We are more than happy to co-operate with the government on developing such a plan. There are not many issues these days that the government and the entire Opposition can agree on.”
Gandhi added that he thinks that the government should have a discussion in Parliament. We should all have a discussion in Parliament, and we should try and not make it a discussion where we are abusing you (government) and you are abusing us (opposition). I think we should make it a discussion, where we are participating, we are showing the country that on this fundamental issue, there is agreement and the best minds are going to be put into place to solve this issue.
“I think it would be good if we have a discussion… detailed discussion and then the Prime Minister puts in place a plan for each city – methodical, systematic plan on how within the next five or ten years… maybe, we cannot resolve the problem, but how we are going to impact the problem and make life for our people easier”, he said, while adding that “I think a good idea would be that we frame the discussion not on us saying what you have not done, and not on you saying what we have not done, but simply saying that what we are going to do for the people in India in the future, what are the action steps that we need to take.”
Gandhi concluded his speech stating, “So, I would say that it would be an interesting experiment to see if instead of you blaming us and we blaming you, we can try and say – on this one issue where we agree, there is no disagreement… where we say- listen, let us just talk about the future of the people of India.”
