Cong walks out of meet on Lok Sabha agenda

The Congress today walked out of the meeting of the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) of Lok Sabha, alleging that the central government was adopting an "undemocratic" approach and bulldozing the proceedings in the House.

A meeting of the BAC to decide on the Lok Sabha's agenda for next week was held in Speaker Sumitra Mahajan's chamber this afternoon where leaders from a number of parties were present.

The Lok Sabha has been paralysed since March 5, when Parliament met after a recess, due to protest by various parties on issues like PNB scam, special status for Andhra Pradesh and Cauvery dispute. Amid the din, the Finance Bill and the appropriation bills were yesterday passed by the House without discussion and two other bills were also pushed today by the government.

Unhappy with the passage of bills without any discussion, Congress leader and deputy chief whip of the party in the lower house K C Venugopa today stormed out of the BAC meeting and accused the government of bypassing all democratic traditions and customs of the House.

He alleged that the government was trying to avoid discussion on the PNB scam issue.

The Government had yesterday passed the all-important finance bill and demands for grants without any discussion in the Lok Sabha. He said today too the government went ahead with two bills without any discussion, although the opposition parties, including the Congress, had agreed to cooperate in passage of important legislations like The Payment of Gratuity (Amendment) Bill.

"The Government was hell bent on passing bills without any discussion, and is neither interested in amicably settling the issues in the House in a democratic manner," Venugopal said in a statement.

The Congres leader said the government is making efforts to avoid any sort of discussion on the PNB scam, and is passing all the bills without any discussion amidst the din in Lok Sabha.

Allocating time for more bills would only help the government to pass them without any discussion, he said.

Mahajan's efforts last week to end the impasse in the House came a cropper after the Opposition alleged that the government had made no effort to reach out to them to important issues.