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When Finance Minister P Chidambaram met Opposition leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley on Saturday to seek support for the insurance Bill (which will increase foreign direct investment cap from 26 to 49 per cent), Swaraj’s reply was: “Jab nai sarkar aayegi tab hum karenge,” (we will do it when a new government is in place). Chidambaram’s retort was: “Why waste time? It is going to be our government again, so you might as well do it now.”
The rhetorical exchange suggests another contentious session of Parliament that starts from today.
The session, on till August 30, will see a hopeful government listing 44 Bills to be cleared in 16 working days. These include the food security Bill, those related to reforms in the insurance and pension sectors and an amendment to the Right to Information Act to keep political parties out of its ambit. Top government managers said their priority would be to get the ordinances cleared to avoid having to re-promulgate these, and of course, get pending Bills, including the Companies Bill, passed.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Saturday he hoped the monsoon session would be “constructive and productive”. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath said all parties wanted the smooth running of Parliament but expressed their concerns, especially related to erosion of Parliament’s supremacy as a result of a Supreme Court order on criminals in politics. Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, who was present during the meeting, said the government was likely to make a statement on the issue.
Leaders belonging to the Left parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) have expressed concern over the implications of a court order disqualifying a legislator, if convicted in a criminal case and barring those in jail or police custody, from contesting the polls.
Although the BJP, which disrupted the Budget session demanding Singh’s resignation over the faulty allocation of coal blocks, has said it does not want to disrupt the monsoon session, there are others who will be happy to perform that function. The opposition wants debates on the land acquisition Bill, the state of the economy, rampant corruption in the midday meal scheme, floods in Uttarakhand, the ongoing tussle between the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) in the Ishrat Jahan shootout case and Chinese intrusions into the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir.
The opposition leaders are also concerned over another Supreme Court order barring reservation in super-speciality courses in medical colleges. The decision on a separate Telangana could cast a shadow on the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha in the first few days, with members from Andhra Pradesh, agitated over the move, likely to create uproar. Several members from the Seemandhra region belonging to Congress and Telugu Desam parties have tendered their resignations in protest against the decision but these have not been accepted and the Congress leadership is attempting to persuade its Members of Parliament and ministers not to take such a step.
While the BJP has demanded that the Bill on the formation of Telangana be brought in the monsoon session, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) wants discussion on the government’s recent move to allow more foreign equity in many sectors. The main opposition party has also decided to raise the issue of confrontation between the CBI and the IB and its implications on the country’s security.
