The Congress Tuesday said the BJP’s agenda mentioned in the president’s address to the joint sesion of both houses of parliament was a copy of its plans.

In the debate on the motion of thanks on the president’s address, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said the Congress is prepared to play the role of a constructive opposition.

Azad said most of the programmes mentioned in the address of President Pranab Mukherjee were started and executed by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

“The speech is a copied document, but you could have hired someone with better command on English to change the language of the document. Of the programmes mentioned in this speech, 90 percent of work in most of them has already been done by our government,” Azad said in the Rajya Sabha.

The address of the president at the beginning of parliament session after a new Lok Sabha is elected – a constitutional necessity – is a document forwarding the new government’s agenda.

“There is nothing in the speech that can create a ‘shreshta Bharat’ (superior India). The slogan ‘sabka sath sabka vikas’ (taking everyone together for development) is a simple translation of Manmohan Singh’s inclusive development programme,” Azad said.

Taking a jibe at the ruling party, Azad said: “Mandate, power and money never stick with one person, it keeps shifting from one hand to other.”

Azad also said the Congress would play a “constructive opposition” and the “Congress is a responsible political party, one of the oldest in the world. You (BJP) may have got larger mandate than us, but our policies and programmes were, are, and will always be for the people”.

“We are proud of our work under (former) prime minister Manmohan Singh,” Azad added.