NDA cannot hold House to ransom: Congress

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the Left parties came down heavily on the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) for misrepresenting facts as the breach between the government and the Opposition widened yesterday.

The Left parties said the Opposition was trying to curtail democracy and charged that it did not even have the right to be in the opposition.

Sensing that the emotional rather than political instinct of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had opened up a polemical space for the Opposition, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee questioned the Opposition version of the Prime Minister's "rudeness" and said Singh had merely pointed out that he could not accept the memorandum as his chamber was "not the forum to discuss the Finance Bill. Discussion on it should be held on the floor of the House".

The NDA-Prime Minister meeting did not last two and a half minutes during which Singh threw the Opposition papers down on the table but 10 minutes during which the arrest of Uma Bharti was also discussed and the Prime Minister escorted the leaders of the Opposition to the door," Mukherjee said.

Charging the Opposition with paralysing Parliament, he said: "If disrupting the House is their strategy then they will have to think twice. But if they think they can cow down the government in this manner, they are mistaken".

Mukherjee said the Prime Minister could only have put the amendments proposed by the Opposition on the table, considering that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had been disrupting Parliament since it had been convened.

"Should he have kept the memorandum on his head? Or in the waste-paper basket? The table is the only place where he could have kept the memorandum," Mukherjee told reporters referring to the Opposition charge that Singh "threw" their memorandum back at them.

NDA convener George Fernandes and other leaders had stated after the meeting with the Prime Minister that Singh had been "uncivilised, impolite and discourteous" and refused to accept their memorandum.

Giving his version of events, Mukherjee said former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha asked how Customs and excise duties on petroleum products could be reduced without first informing the House.

Advani said he was "shocked" at the "unprecedented" development that the Karnataka police had been sent to arrest then Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti.

"While the Karnataka police never reached Bhopal and Bharti had to go to Hubli all by herself to surrender, the Jharkhand police came to Delhi to arrest Shibu Soren," the Defence Minister said, indicating that all the government had done was pay the NDA back in its own coin.

NDA leaders Advani, Sinha, Fernandes, Jaswant Singh, M Venkaiah Naidu, Sushma Swaraj and VK Malhotra were present at yesterday's meeting, while the Prime Minister was accompanied by Mukherjee, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

Mukherjee said Singh told the NDA delegation that they were "not allowing Parliament to function and submitting a memorandum on the Finance Bill in the Prime Minister's chamber".

Singh told the NDA leaders that either they should allow debate on the Finance Bill to take place in the House or "stick to the agreement which the leaders had entered into" on Tuesday where Mukherjee, Azad and Swaraj and Malhotra had decided that all demands for grants and relevant appropriation Bills would be passed without debate by suspending the relevant rules.

It was further decided at that meeting that the Finance Bill would be passed without debate with official amendments. Business in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha were transacted yesterday in accordance with this agreement.

"It is a classical story of making mountain out of a mole hill. Singh is the most sober man in the government. We can lose our temper but not the Prime Minister," he said.

The Left too, came down heavily on the Opposition. "No party can be above the system. This is unacceptable behaviour by the BJP and the NDA. They have no right even to be in the Opposition," CPI(M) leader in the Rajya Sabha Nilotpal Basu and his counterpart in the Lok Sabha Basudeb Acharia said.

Basu said never in the history of Parliament had the Opposition asked for sine die adjournment before schedule. "This is really unprecedented that there was no debate on the President's Address, Railway Appropriation Bill, demand for grants and Finance Bill," he said.

"If the parliamentary process is made irrelevant and street fighting becomes the substitute, it means the country has reached a very sad state," he said.