Sonia Gandhi speaks on 60th Anniversary of the first sitting of Parliament of India

Congress President Sonia Gandhi while addressing the Parliament on the occasion of 60th Anniversary of the first sitting of Parliament of India said: “Sixty five years ago, India awakened to freedom with a bold and ambitious vision. A vision to build legislature on the basis of universal adult franchise. At one stroke millions of our poor and illiterate men and women were given the power to change their destiny. Let us not forget those troubled days and months and the numerous challenges the country faced then. Millions of refugees were homeless, communal tensions were rife, borders were tensed, resources were scarce. The very idea of a democratic India was being ridiculed in many quarters. When far older democracies had achieved universal adult franchise after long decades of struggle, how could it become a reality a nation beset with such problems. These questions were then asked. To their eternal credit and our undying gratitude our founding fathers persisted. The poor and illiterate masses of this country have turned out to be amazingly skilled and sophisticated. Again and again they have voted with wisdom, voted with purpose, sometimes reaffirming their faith in those governments , sometimes voting them out. And if there is one thread running through this past six decades, it is people's power which has been felt at the highest level of governance. The Aam admi has become the heart and the soul of our democracy. India's freedom struggle reinvented the idea of democracy. The notion of democracy said Gandhiji the father of our nation and the leader of our freedom struggle is that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest. It is this revolutionary idea that opened the doors of our legislatures and began to transform the Indian society. It has done so in a peaceful and evolutionary manner based on the time tested principles of secularism and social justice.