Trinamool Congress MP Sukhendu Sekhar Ray on Wednesday accused the Centre of attacking the federal structure of the country by unilaterally making the decision to extend the jurisdiction of the Border Security Force to 50 kilometers in states bordering Bangladesh and Pakistan. The Rajya Sabha MP, during his speech on the Motion of Thanks on the President’s address, alleged that the constitutional heads in non-BJP-ruled states are interfering in day-to-day matters of the administration and behaving like politicians.

Ray alleged that the government has resorted to a “surgical attack” on federalism, which is part of the basic structure of the Constitution.

His remarks came days after a public spat between Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Governor Jagdeep Dhankar in Trinamool Congress-ruled West Bengal.

He said the government issued a “fatwa” to make amendments in the IAS cadre rules which is an arbitrary and a veiled attempt to centralise executive powers of the states and has been opposed by nine chief ministers as well as over 100 retired IAS, IFS, etc.

The home ministry extended the jurisdiction of the BJP “without having any discussion with the states concerned. This unilateral decision on the part of the central government is an attempt of coercion upon the elected state governments having international borders,” Ray said.

“Constitutional heads in opposition ruled states are behaving like political functionaries and interfering with the day-to-day administration of the state and challenging the policy decisions. Day in and Day out they are coming with press statements. This is unprecedented and a surgical attack on our federal structure,” Ray said.

He alleged that there is an assault on constitutional and statutory institutions like the Election Commission of India, CVC, CAG, CBI, etc and they are being exploited for the political advantage of the ruling party and against the opposition parties.

“Most of these institutions have turned to be breeding ground for a selected group of retired government servants who are not only being appointed by the government to serve them beyond their service tenure but also getting extension after extension in their extended service career,” Ray said.

He said that the President’s speech did not address several issues including job losses in the country.

“According to estimates by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, 2 crore Indians lost their jobs in April-May 2021.

“In October 2021 at least 5.46 million Indians lost jobs and in November last year 6 million salaried jobs were lost. There is no whisper in the President’s address about these alarming joblessness in the country due to policy paralysis of the union government,” Ray said.

He alleged that the government has emerged as a “trader” in the name of economic reforms and is selling state-owned companies like public sector banks, insurance companies and profit-making PSU companies.

”The government policy is to privatise profits of the public sector on the one hand and nationalise losses of private sector on the other,” he alleged

“I am giving one example – Vodafone Idea, the private telecom company owes the government Rs 1.7 lakh crore whereas Rs 16,000 crore shall be invested by the government in their share capital. Is this not crony capitalism?” Ray said.

The Trinamool Congress MP said there are bad loans being written off by the banks but the government has not named the “the big fishes” who are eating up public money.

He urged the government to publish a whitepaper on the issue of blackmoney.

“If this government has the courage to inform the people about the action taken by this government to unearth blackmoney, let the government publish a white paper on blackmoney following the footsteps of Late Pranab Mukherjee,” Ray said.

Mukherjee during his tenure as finance minister had published a white paper on blackmoney.

Ray said banks are writing off bad loans but have reduced interest rate on savings accounts to 2.9 percent from six percent earlier which has been detrimental for the common man and senior citizens.

The MP also raised the issue of Pegasus spyware during his speech.