Venkaiah Naidu quotes The Hindu to make his point

Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu confessed on Tuesday that he experienced a great deal of anxiety on the day before the Bill on abrogation of Article 370 was to be placed in the two Houses of Parliament.

Mr. Naidu said he burnt the midnight oil to study all aspects of the issue in depth in order to conduct the proceedings in the best possible way.

“I wanted it to be a smooth affair,” he said, adding that to his surprise, the Bill on Reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir was passed by 2/3rd majority in the Rajya Sabha and by 4/5th in the Lok Sabha.

Referring to a recent book-release function in Chennai, where he was talking about how the Article 370 had outlived its purpose, he said N. Ram of The Hindu, who was also at the meeting, sent him a paper cutting of a report published by the newspaper on November 24 in 1963 quoting Jawaharlal Nehru speaking about the ‘temporary’ and ‘transitory’ nature of the provision in the Constitution during a debate in Parliament in 1963.

The Vice-President also shared another recent experience.

He said an article written by him and published in The Hindu, drew negative response from a reader. In the article, Mr. Venkaiah Naidu had cited an excerpt from a book, talking about how B.R. Ambedkar as a Law Minister, had opposed special status for Kashmir. Informing that the book was the fourth volume (there are total six volumes) of Dr. S.N. Busi’s Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Framing of Indian Constitution, the Vice-President said he had secured it from Parliament library.

He said The Hindu’s Reader’s Editor had given a clarification by giving specifics of the book and its significance. “We live in a democracy where everybody has the freedom to express their views. But we should not mislead people,” he said.

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