As both Houses were adjourned on the first day of the winter session with little or no discussion, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and a handful of colleagues defended Home Minister P Chidambaram who is facing a parliamentary ‘boycott’ by the main Opposition National Democratic Alliance.
Earlier in the day, Chidambaram was prevented from speaking in the Lok Sabha, which adjourned for the day following disturbances when he got up to answer. As for the upper house, it was adjourned after obituary references to two sitting Rajya Sabha MPs who died recently.
The prime minister said the BJP-led alliance’s boycott was unjustified, but avoided commenting on the 2G case that is going on in court or Chidambaram’s alleged role in the dubious spectrum allocation of 2008.
“I sincerely hope the political parties will desist any such temptation,” he told reporters outside Parliament. “There is virtually no case for a boycott of the type that has been talked about in the newspapers.”
The PM’s Congress party chose to cancel its customary daily briefing in the capital. Party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi, who was in Chennai, said the BJP, with its boycott, was “diminishing” the role of the Supreme Court that was hearing the 2G case.
Another bout of attack came from the ruling party, when its general secretary Digvijay Singh attacked the tactics of both the BJP and the RSS.
Otherwise, no senior party functionary — not even current telecom minister Kapil Sibal — came out in public to defend Chidambaram. There was no word from party president Sonia Gandhi either although she was present in the Lok Sabha.
There was, nonetheless, an interesting twist in the tale: an unpublicised meeting Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had yesterday with BJP president Nitin Gadkari at the former’s residence. Mukherjee’s office said the main topic of their talks was the issue of the goods and services tax, but Gadkari’s office said the issue was 2G. That, the BJP functionaries said, included the Chidambaram’s “role”.
The exact contours of the attack — the idea of boycott — was mooted by the BJP’s Sushma Swaraj, who is the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, at an NDA strategy meeting — also held yesterday. The NDA decided on two prongs: attacking soft targets in the UPA and focusing on possible internal divisions in the government to wear down its credibility. Sources in the alliance said Mukherjee’s 25 March 2011 letter to the PM that zeroed in on Chidambaram’s “role” was discussed as a “way of exposing schisms” within the UPA. Swaraj suggested the NDA also brought to the fore the government’s “misuse” of the Central Bureau of Investigation to “protect” Chidambaram.
“We want the House to function,” said BJP MP S S Ahluwalia. “But, we will take every opportunity to corner Chidambaram,” he said, suggesting that the coming weeks are going to be far from smooth for the government.
On its part, the ruling UPA, appealed to the Opposition to “learn a lesson” from what had happened in the euro zone nations. If the economy was not managed properly and Parliament not allowed to function, India could go the way, it warned. “As we all know,” said the PM, “the global economy is facing serious difficulties.”
He hoped the session would move smoothly, saying the government was prepared to discuss all issues the Opposition might want to discuss. “I sincerely hope that all political parties would recognise that some very important pieces of legislation are going to be presented in this session,” Singh added. “Our country’s sustained development prospects demand that many of these Bills should be converted into Acts of Parliament.”
