Parliament in recess, standoff on

The last day of the first part of the Budget session saw the relation between the government and the Opposition hit an all time low, with Speaker Somnath Chatterjee caught smack bang in the middle of it.

For the first time in its history, the Lok Sabha saw a condemnation of an Opposition by the Leader of the House, Pranab Mukherjee, for not allowing the Speaker to complete his observations.

The result, a stung National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has withdrawn its MPs from consultative committees and is planning withdrawing from standing committees and the business advisory panel.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said it was being demonised for asking Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take the House and the nation into confidence over the absconding Coal and Mines Minister Shibu Soren against whom a non bailable arrest warrant had been issued.

"By condemning the Opposition on the floor of the House, the Leader of the House by his disingenuous statement wants to distract the nation from the disgrace of having an absconder in the council of ministers," said Leader of the Opposition LK Advani.

"This leads us to the conclusion that the Prime Minister is not in control of his own government," said Advani. BJP spokesman VK Malhotra confirmed that the NDA had withdrawn its nominees from parliamentary consultative committees.

"We are still debating whether to withdraw our nominees to standing committees and the business advisory committee," Advani added.

Mukherjee, however, said the only reason he had issued the statement, under rule 373 of rules of business, was because "in the 50 years of Indian Parliament, the Speaker was not allowed to speak."

Some Opposition members went to the extent of saying 'instead of sermonising', he (the Speaker) should allow the leader of the Opposition to speak."

The man in the middle of it all, Chatterjee, minced no words to show that he was upset with the Opposition targeting him.

"I am pained and upset by the development. I was honoured when I was the common choice for the Speaker's post and in my speech had said it should be our endeavour when we went home, to ask ourselves what we had done for the country," he said.

In fact, the treasury benches had complained to him that he allowed far more time to the Opposition, he said.

"Despite this, the Opposition deems me partisan. In the last few days, I allowed Advani to speak not once but three times when there was no cause to," he added.

"In fact, giving in to the Opposition demand I was going to ask one of the ministers to respond on the Soren issue. But before that could happen, the Opposition cast aspersions on the Chair," he said.

Chatterjee said it had been his decision not to adjourn the Lok Sabha every time members rushed to the well of the House. "I had sent the footage of yesterday's proceedings to Advani to see for himself how we looked to the rest of the country," he added.

Parliament has been adjourned till August 16, when it will reconvene to clear the second and third part of the debate on the Budget. The attempt, according to sources will be to break this impasse and to mollify the Speaker before it is too late.