New Delhi [India], July 29 : Congress MP Karti Chidambaram on Wednesday called the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill "pointless" and said it "only increases penalties, prison terms and prescribes time limits for trials and special courts."
Speaking to ANI outside the Parliament, he said, "This bill, if anybody has read it, is pointless. This bill is like closing the stable doors after the horses have bolted... This bill is only increasing penalties, increasing prison terms, and prescribes time limits for trials and special courts. Everybody knows that penalty and punishment don't necessarily deter wrongdoing and crime... The special courts also need a certain infrastructure... What really needs to be done is the reformation of the examination process, which is the NTA... This law is not going to prevent leaks because the preparatory market is worth the lakhs of crores. So they have a vested interest to penetrate the NTA..."
"The expectations of the Gen Z has to be understood by boomers and Gen X. We can't have the old style of politics where we delay and have bureaucratic rigmarole. They want results and they want action. Unless governments and establishments retune themselves in delivering their promises, the patience of Gen Z is not going to be like previous generations," Karti Chidambaram further said.
Congress MP Shafi Parambil accused the BJP of utilising the bill as another attempt to give credit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"Even after all this chaos, they (BJP) are utilising this bill as another attempt to give credit to Narendra Modi. They have zero accountability.. They can't even agree that this bill was forced because we lost 21 valuable lives... It was Dharmendra Pradhan that was important for them, not students... It was not lack of law. It was lack of intent. The government played with the mafia... They are just credit mongers," Parambil said.
Congress MP Dean Kuriakose said, "Our leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi stood behind the protestors and this strike as a rock... Dharmendra Pradhan was forced to tender his resignation... Then how can they say that the Opposition was not taking this matter seriously..."
Meanwhile, Samajwadi Party (SP) MP Zia Ur Rehman Barq said that the opposition is always ready for the discussion.
"The opposition was always ready for the discussion... We hope that the government will now fulfil its promise of justice... We don't have a lot of expectations from the government. The reason for this is that there's a difference between what the government does and what it says... Since those who were jailed haven't been released, and the government is stubbornly insistent on taking action, we protest this and demand that the government fulfil its promises. Otherwise, in the future, the entire nation will lose faith in the BJP government," SP MP Zia Ur Rehman Barq said.
The Minister of State for the PMO Jitendra Singh moved the Amendment Bill to the 2024 Act for discussion in the Lok Sabha, in the backdrop of the widespread protests over the NEET-UG paper leak.