NDA walkout ends winter session

The winter session of Parliament ended on a heated note with the Treasury and Opposition benches in the both Houses came armed with explosive issues.

The first salvo in the Lok Sabha was fired by BJP's VK Malhotra, who raised the issue of a letter from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), enquiring if prosecution of LK Advani in the Babri Masjid demolition case could be revived.

The letter, written by PMO official Pulak Chatterjee, was addressed to the secretary, department of personnel and training, which is the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI's ) parent body.

"The letter written by the PMO starts with the phrase 'I have been asked ...' just who has asked him to write this letter should be made clear," Malhotra said.

The baton was then handed over to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who termed the letter an "interference and an attempt to pressurise" investigating agencies. Even though there was a lot of shouting in the House, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee managed to control the proceedings.

In this connection, Leader of the House Pranab Mukherjee made a statement on behalf of the government saying that the letter was a "routine enquiry" and that it was in no way an attempt to interfere in the work of the investigating agency.

At this, Vajpayee interjected and read out passages from the letter saying that it clearly showed the government's intent in pressurising the CBI in filing a revision petition against Advani. Mukherjee then replied that government correspondence has never been discussed in the House.

"Mr Vajpayee, you may recall that in 1977, when things were not good between the then Prime Minister Morarji Desai and Deputy Prime Minister Charan Singh, their letters were not discussed in the House," he said. The NDA staged a walkout after that.

Following this, the matter was closed by the Speaker, if only to get embroiled in the Tehelka expose case wherein it was sought to be proved that Best Bakery prime witness Zahira Sheikh had taken money to resile her statement in court.

The matter was raised by Devendra Prasad Yadav of the RJD, who said that the BJP, which had asked for Railway Minister Lalu Prasad's resignation for the distribution of Rs 100 notes to "poor women" should ask Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to resign.

The BJP's response came from Haren Pathak who said that Tehelka had itself printed that Zahira Sheikh did not know Madhu shrivastava, the BJP MLA said to have bribed her.

In the Rajya Sabha, too, the PMO letter triggered a heated exchange between Minister for Personnel Suresh Pachouri, and BJP member Arun Jaitley.

Pachouri said the letter from the PMO was just ascertaining the legal standing of various cases, and not interfering as was being suggested. Matters got out of hand when Pachouri also produced letters from the erstwhile Vajpayee PMO, eliciting information from the CBI on the same Babri Masjid demolition case.