Raising controversial remarks questioning the efficacy of multi-party Parliamentary democracy, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday claimed there are doubts in the minds of people about the existing system now and whether it will help in achieving the goals of a welfare State set by founding fathers.
He questioned the achievements of governments of 30 years, including coalition dispensations between 1989 and 2014, saying they could not take even five big decisions while Narendra Modi government in last government has taken "more than 50 big decisions" in last five years.
Shah's statement at the 46th National Management Convention organised by All India Management Association come three days after he raised another controversy when he pitched for 'One Nation, One Language' to make Hindi as the national language.
The latest remarks could fuel further controversy, as Opposition has been accusing the BJP of trying to tamper with the multi-party system in the country and bring in a two-party system. Earlier, BJP had advocated two-party system and were hid its preference for changing Parliamentary democracy into Presidential form of government.
Shah said Modi got a historic mandate in 2014 when it got a majority on its own and becoming the first non-Congress party to have numbers on its own in Lok Sabha in the history of independent India.
Noting that founding fathers had adopted a multi-party Parliamentary democratic system after putting a lot of thought and looking into the systems of various countries, he said, "the aim of the multi-party system is to create a welfare State...The target of the founding fathers was to create a state where all are equal and all got equal opportunity. This is the essence what we get when we go through the debates of the Constituent Assembly debates."
"But after 70 years of independence, there are questions in the minds of people whether the multi-party Parliamentary democratic system has failed. Will it help in building an India envisioned by the framers of our Constitution? There is huge disappointment," the Home Minister said.
Referring to 2013, a year before the Lok Sabha elections, Shah said news of scams and corruption were tumbling out day after day and the country's border as well as inside were insecure.
"Our soldiers were beheaded and insulted, women were unsafe, youth were disillusioned, people were protesting. There were protests by Anna Hazare and Ramdev...There was policy paralysis. Till 2013, there was a government in which every minister considered himself the Prime Minister but did not think of Prime Minister as Prime Minister," he said.
Claiming that decisive actions took years earlier, he said Modi government took decisions not based on vote bank but for the people.