Sonia Gandhi speaking in the Lok Sabha on Constitution Day.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi spoke on the occasion of Constitution Day in the Lok Sabha. Here are highlights of her speech:
- The constitution strengthens our democracy and unites us in diversity.
- It's a document crafted after decades of toil.
- It took three years to write the Constitution. There were furious debates on it.
- On the morning of 26 November 1949, when the constitution was formally adopted, Dr Rajendra Prasad complimented Dr Ambedkar by saying, there could not have been a better chief for the Drafting Committee.
- Dr Ambedkar said in his concluding statement: I was surprised when I was chosen as the chairman. There were more learned and better people than me in the Committee.
- He said that it was the discipline of the Congress party that the Drafting Committee was able to give full information about every Act in the Constitution.
- Dr Ambedkar, when he came back to India after studies. He had only one aim to provide respect to the poorest of the poor.
- The history of the Constitution is very old and is linked to our freedom struggle and that it why it is interlinked with the Congress party.
- In March 1931 in Karachi convention, fundamental rights and economic rights were mentioned in the proposal.
- The Constituent Assembly got support from Nehru Patel Rajendra Prasad and Maulana Azad.
- Eight committees the chairman of these were Nehru Patel or Prasad. Azad was a prominent member of five committees.
- There is no doubt that the Constitution gave an equal voice to the poor and gave secular values to the country.
- Quoting Dr BR Ambedkar, to whom the discussion pays tribute, she said No matter how good the Constitution is, if the people who implement it are bad, then the Constitution will also turn out bad. And no matter how bad the Constitution is, if the people who implement it are good, it will turn out to be good.
- Today is a day of joy but it is sad also. Sad because the principles of the Constitution that guided us for decades, danger looms over them.
- The incidents in the past few months show that it is totally against the principles enshrined in the Constitution.
- The people who don't have faith in the Constitution. The people who don't play any role in the forming of the Constitution are swearing by the Constitution. What can be a bigger joke than that.