By Charandeep Singh
We must give credence to the fact, that ultimately in the Indian parliamentary democracy the responsibility for smooth conduct of the house lies with the “treasury benches”. The “opposition” which has metamorphosis-ed itself into “obstruction”, courtesy the role-play by BJP as opposition in UPA-2 will always give resistance. The complete wash-out of the recently concluded monsoon session of parliament, apart from draining tax-payers money also exhibited inept flexibility on the part of floor managers of BJP to get opposition on board.
The session started with the usual “rabble-rousing” antics of the opposition benches, who were making demands of the resignation of Sushma Swaraj and Vasundhra Raje over their explicit involvement in Lalit-gate and that of Shivraj Chauhan over Vyapam scam. It was rejected by BJP with a lot of compunction. Assuage , placate or retract, the house must function has been the established norm of Indian parliamentary system till now. Rather than making efforts to accommodate opposition, what we saw was sheer intransigence and obduracy from treasury benches. The stance of the government was simply too rigid. This hardening of positions , in fact deepened the fault lines between the “opposition benches” and “treasury benches”. The government ought to show some “political- brinkmanship”.
Right from the start of session, there were fissures in the opposition camp. TMC and SP, were not rallying behind the Congress in totality, with Mulayam coming Sushma support by saying, “ Usko 100 khoon maaf”. Even when the entire opposition was debating whether to take the olive branch offered by the government in the form of debate on Lalit Modi, government made a brazen attack on two Congress CM’s , Virbhadra Singh of HP and Harish Rawat of Uttrakhand, accusing them of corruption. Thus the slug-fest turned from debate on Lalit Modi into “Your CM vs My CM”. The same very day we saw a denigrating protest by NDA members against the stalling of parliamentary proceedings by opposition , in the Parliament Complex. The protest by the ruling regime was unheard of, and it led to stiffening of positions. Real-politik demanded that government should have engaged the opposition for business to be transacted rather than giving retorts. So much so, Nitin Gadkari even threatened Rahul Gandhi with defamation cases , for making allegations against Sushma Swaraj.
Then Rajnath Singh , while giving a reply to the house on Gurdaspur terror attack invoked the term , “Hindu-terror” and attributed the origination of this term to Congress. Giving air, to “Hindu-terror”, suits the BJP as the traction gained from the phrase, could reap political dividends in the ensuing Bihar elections, and secondly it could divert attention from lalit-gate and Vyapam. Than while addressing an election rally in Bihar, the PM crossed a political Rubicon, by giving clean chit to Shivraj Chauhan and Vasundhra raje, absolving them of any guilt and hailing them as messiah's of economic development in their states. Taking a cue from it Venkaiah Naidu, Parliamentary Affairs announce on the floor of the house, “No illegal or immoral act has been committed by any Central minister or Chief Ministers of the BJP.” This statement comes when so many heads have been rolled out in Vyapam scam, CBI has also filed FIR. This begs the opposition to question , does it tantamount to influencing the course of the investigation.
With opposition wanting an answer from government on this issue, than came the surprise move to suspend 25 Congress members for 5 days from the House by speaker. With this act the government conceded a self goal, by coagulating the entire opposition. This prompted, the Congress leader in the Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, charging the NDA with ushering in the ‘Gujarat model of legislature management’ under which scant regard is shown to legislative procedure and the bulk of the opposition gets suspended for considerable periods during which the executive does its business unilaterally. Even the parties who were dithering in support to Congress, stood rock-solid behind it. This even prompted Derek O’Brien of TMC to remark, “What was the need to distribute free fevicol in the house?”
With this kerfuffle in Parliament having seemingly no end in sight, the role of the leader of the House comes into question. The PM was conspicuous by his absence from the house. There was no communication, with the opposition from his side either inside or outside the house. In fact, it was this Ostrich like attitude laced with hubris which further alienated the opposition.These strange tactics were employed by him, with aplomb in Gujrat assembly but, natioanal politics is proving to be a different kettle fish altogether.
Now, in the view of this entire conundrum the moot question which comes to mind is , whether the BJP was at all serious in getting the GST Bill passed? Arun Jaitely has blamed the obduracy of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi for stalling the GST Bill. Jaitley has argued that precious economic growth is being sacrificed because of the delay in the implementation of GST, as it could boost GDP by up to 2 percentage points a year. But Jaitely should stop this innocent posturing and must explain why BJP allowed the nation to sacrifice 2 percentage points of additional GDP over the last 4 to 5 years. It got stuck in recent years because of the sheer obstinacy of Modi who, as Chief Minister of Gujarat, blocked the Centre’s efforts in this direction for political ends. If the BJP had cooperated with the Manmohan Singh government, the GST would have been operational by 2012.
Actually the genesis of this entire showdown, lies in the manner in which the NDA aggressively, even arrogantly, sought to push the highly contentious Land Acquisition Bill down the opposition’s throat. The bitterness thus created, had its shadow on other important legislative business like GST as well. Thus, we must always remember that , “Politics of consensus is always better that politics of contention”.