Sharad Yadav

New Delhi, Nov. 26: JDU leader Sharad Yadav appeared to have embarrassed himself today while going out of his way to lend support to the Congress’s deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha, Anand Sharma.

Rising to the defence of Sharma in the Upper House, the JDU leader requested deputy chairman P.J. Kurien that he should let Sharma speak as the “deputy leader” of the house. The issue was renaming of the airport in Hyderabad.

“When the Leader of Opposition is not there, then the deputy leader should be allowed,” Yadav told Kurien.

Yadav was silenced as Kurien stood up to politely inform him that there was no Leader of Opposition in the House and Sharma was the deputy leader of the Congress party and not of the Rajya Sabha. Worse for Yadav, Sharma said he had never said he was the deputy leader of the House.

Convention is that when the Leader of the House from the treasury benches, the Leader of Opposition or the deputy Leader of Opposition speaks, they get precedence over others. House chairpersons and deputy chairpersons also allow them interventions.

During the zero hour, the feisty Sharma stood up to raise the issue of retaining Rajiv Gandhi’s name for the Shamshabad airport in Hyderabad. The issue is being raised by Telangana’s Congress MPs for the past two days.

Kurien, himself a senior Congressman, said other MPs should be allowed to make their zero hour mentions and Sharma should give a notice. Supporting the Telangana MPs on opposition to naming the domestic airport to NT Rama Rao instead of Rajiv Gandhi, Sharma said the government was deliberately wiping off memory of the late Prime Minister. Sharma said he had given a prior notice to raise the issue.

“Anand Sharma is deputy leader of the Congress party. I don’t know if he is deputy leader of House as I don’t have any papers to say that, so I cannot treat him as the deputy leader of House,” said Kurien, after Yadav intervened.

“I have read his notice and it was for 25 November (yesterday),” said Kurien.

Ever since the break-up with the BJP before the general election, the JDU has been cosy with the Congress like it partnered the Trinamul Congress at the sit-in protest yesterday. Yadav said even today that the government cannot bring back money stashed in offshore accounts and demanded that the government should concentrate on recovery of non-performing assets of banks and create employment. Yadav also took a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he himself admitted in his “mann ke baat” (aired on All India Radio) that no one knows the amount of black money.