What matters is how many days Parliament functioned: Naidu

His remarks come a day after the dates for Parliament's Winter Session were announced following opposition's criticism of the government for delaying the session.

The Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs (CCPA) headed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh met here yesterday to decide the dates of the Winter Session. The CCPA recommended that the session be held from December 15 to January 5.

Speaking at a literary festival here, Naidu said that the debate on the freedom of speech and expression should go on.

"How many days the Parliament sat doesn't matter, what matters is how many days it functioned," he said.

Naidu said that the philosophy of life should revolve around "character, calibre, compassion and conduct and not caste, community and cash".

Stressing that literature was the backbone of the society, Naidu said that it mirrors its inner workings, its triumphs and challenges, its anxieties and its possibilities.

"From Kalidasa to Premchand, from Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore to present day, India has always been blessed with a strong literary lineage of writers, poets, intellectuals and thinkers, who have chronicled times, exemplified our open traditions," he said.

The Vice President also said that India is the world's youngest country of its size, and new intellectual churning and questioning, new ideas about society, politics, citizens' activism and youth power are its exciting new features.

He urged the "pseudo politicians" to leave the three Cs of caste, community and cash and go back to "character, calibre, capacity, conduct and compassion" as the only yardstick for measuring merit.