New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government on Wednesday said that they merely retained the original Preamble in the newly printed copies of the Constitution.
Moments before the first meeting in the new Parliament building on Tuesday, the Centre had distributed new copies of the Constitution without the words 'secular' and 'socialist' in the Preamble.
"The constitution existed like this when it was framed. The change came into place after the 42nd amendment. Genuine copies of the Constitution exist," BJP leader and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prahlad Joshi said.
Interestingly, the newly printed copies account for all the other amendments in the constitution.
Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury had slammed the BJP for making the omissions.
"The new copies of the Constitution that were given to us today (19th September), the one we held in our hands and entered (the new Parliament building), its Preamble doesn't have the words 'socialist secular'," Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury told news agency ANI.
"We know that the words were added after an amendment in 1976 but if someone gives us the Constitution today and it doesn't have those words, it is a matter of concern...Their intention is suspicious. It has been done cleverly. It is a matter of concern for me. I tried to raise this issue but I did not get an opportunity to raise this issue," he added.
"How can it be? What's there in their mind is reflected through their actions. Now the Preamble and the Constitution have been amended. The most important words Socialist, Secular were avoided in the Preamble. It is clearly the message that the Government is giving... It is totally unfortunate," Congress MP KC Venugopal said.
The two words 'secular' and 'socialist' were originally not part of the Preamble and were added to it in the 42nd Amendment in December 1976.
Chowdhury on Tuesday read out the Preamble of the Constitution in the new Parliament building.
"This Constitution is no less than Gita, Quran and Bible for us," he said.
"Article 1 says, India, that is Bharat, shall be a union of states. It means that there is no difference between India and Bharat. It will be better if nobody tries to unnecessarily create a rift between the two," he added.
In a historic transition, the Parliament moved into a swanky new complex on Tuesday. Bidding goodbye to the adjacent colonial era Parliament building, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha met for the first time in the new home on the second day of the five-day special session.
