Govt faces no-trust vote; BJP confident of punching holes in Oppn's efforts

Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan surprised the Opposition on Wednesday, the first day of the monsoon session of Parliament, when she not only accepted their notices for a no-confidence motion against the Narendra Modi government but also announced that the debate and voting on the motion would be held as early as Friday.

During the Budget session in March, Mahajan had pointed to disruptions in the House for not taking up a discussion on the notices of no-confidence motion, drawing criticism from opposition parties.

According to sources, this change in the government’s strategy of being amenable to facing a no-confidence motion came at the suggestion of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah.

If the Opposition believes it will use the debate to embarrass the government on a host of issues, the BJP brass thinks the Opposition has offered it a gilded opportunity, that too close to elections to three key north Indian states, and the Lok Sabha polls not far away. 

The PM has already started addressing public rallies across the country. The BJP has also upped the ante in its criticism of the Congress, and has succeeded in catching it on the wrong foot by describing it a party for Muslims. Modi’s reply to the debate in the Lok Sabha on Friday, with his speech set to be telecast live, is expected to mark the launch of his campaign for the 2019 polls.

Unless the PM does the unthinkable by quitting and recommending the dissolution of the House, which will also pave the way for much speculated early Lok Sabha elections, there is little danger to his government. In the Lok Sabha, the BJP continues to command a majority of its own in the House.

Therefore, the no-confidence motion will be less about number-crunching and more about optics. The Opposition will try to embarrass the government on a host of issues – agrarian distress, atrocities on dalits, special status for Andhra Pradesh, increase in deposits of Indians in Swiss banks, lynching incidents, foreign policy, and economy.

The BJP and government strategists are confident the debate and subsequent voting on the motion will expose Opposition disunity, while the PM will punch holes in the Opposition’s efforts at building a narrative against the government on issues such as farm distress. On Wednesday, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs increased the minimum price sugar mills pay to sugarcane growers by Rs 20 a quintal.

The news of the Speaker accepting the notices for a no-confidence motion rattled the market on Wednesday morning. The benchmark BSE Sensex closed nearly 150 points in the red after hitting a new all-time high in the morning.

Soon, government strategists said the BJP-led NDA had sufficient numbers. BJP leaders said the government would get a minimum 314 votes. The 543-member Lok Sabha’s current strength is 534, excluding the Speaker, and the majority mark is 268. The BJP has 273 members. “We are hopeful that we will get support from parties outside the NDA as well. It is strange that the Opposition brings this motion despite the fact that the BJP got a majority on its own and today the NDA is ruling in 21 states,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said.

All parties have either issued or expected to issue whips to its members to be present in the House. BJP’s disgruntled members Kirti Azad and Shatrughan Singha will need to vote with their party or risk losing their membership of the House. Two BJP members are unwell and unlikely to attend the proceedings on Friday.

The Trinamool Congress was unhappy with Friday as the day for the no-confidence motion. The party marks July 20 every year as the martyrs’ day in Kolkata. However, party chief Mamata Banerjee instructed Trinamool’s 34 MPs to be present in the Lok Sabha and vote against the government as a show of Opposition unity.

The AIADMK, the third-largest party after the BJP and the Congress in the Lok Sabha, said its members would criticise the government for its failures. However, its 37 members were unlikely to vote with the Opposition and expected to stage a walkout.

Compulsions of state politics are likely to make the Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal to also remain equidistant from the BJP as well as the Congress, and its 20 members might stage a walkout at the time of voting, as could the members of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti, which has the Congress as its principal opposition in the state. This will bring down the numbers voting against the government.

The Shiv Sena, despite its recent tensions with the BJP, is likely to vote in support of the government and against the motion. Voting against the government would mean its ministers quitting the Union cabinet, and there could be a divorce in its alliance government with the BJP in Maharashtra as well.

“The House will take up the debate (on the motion) on Friday, July 20th. The discussion will be held for the full day, followed by voting on it," the Speaker said.