We’ve been here before. There is strong likelihood that Parliament’s current session, due to end May 10, will fold up earlier because leading Opposition parties are not letting either House function. These obstructionist tactics are so much the pity as this is the Budget Session when MPs have the opportunity to grill the government on every aspect of its functioning, and in respect of every department whose demand for funds from the exchequer is required to pass muster.
Ostensibly, questions arising from various aspects of the alleged high-level corruption in 2G spectrum allocations, and in the matter of allotment of coal blocks spread over two decades, are holding up the functioning of Parliament. Interestingly, both issues have been discussed threadbare in the two Houses before. The 2G affair is, in fact, being adjudicated by the Supreme Court.
The high-decibel Opposition demand for a joint parliamentary committee to examine the 2G case had disrupted Parliament’s work two years ago until the government, in order to buy peace, conceded the demand. But the way the JPC has functioned confirms that this institution is typically used by all parties for partisan, political grandstanding. In India as in Britain (from where we have taken the idea), deliberations of the JPC have shown themselves to be quite pointless, deeply divisive affairs, intended to generate material for political propaganda or tub-thumping, not to get at significant facts that may lie hidden. In any case, the Supreme Court is seized of the matter in the 2G scam. Even so, the extraordinary goings-on in the JPC continue to churn out political bromides that will have no shelf-life beyond the next general election.
The coal allotment issue is also before the Supreme Court, which has asked the CBI to investigate various aspects and report back to it. But Parliament continues to be stalled on this matter (among others), and the resignation of the Prime Minister is demanded almost on a daily basis. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has a point when he urges the Opposition parties to bring their grievances to the House for discussion and debate, and not block the functioning of the country’s highest legislative forum. Such tactics may conceivably serve partisan ends but are not in the public interest when so much work remains to be done.
When elections are not too distant, Opposition parties perhaps worry that the government will pass the Food Security Act and the Land Acquisition Act if the two Houses ran without obstacle, and that this might redound to its credit. A pity, though, that the country’s top legislature has remained jammed.