NEW DELHI: Even while the Lok Sabha couldn’t take up the Finance Bills for discussions amid din in the House, the government has ruled our resorting to the use of guillotine to get the crucial legislative business passed in the Parliament. The government is also learnt to have ruled out the possibility of proroguing of the Parliament in light of continued logjam.
“The government will seek debate and discussions on Finance Bill in the Parliament. There is no move to take recourse to the instrument of guillotine to get the Finance Bill passed,” Union Minister for Parliamentary affairs Ananth Kumar told reporters.
The Opposition MPs in the day protested with the Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, while claiming that the government is violating the parliamentary practice by making attempts to get the Finance Bills passed through guillotine.
They claimed that the government introduced the Finance Bills in the revised List of Business of the House without discussing the matter in the business advisory body.
Leaders from Congress, CPM, RJD and NCP raised the matter with Mahajan. They also submitted the same in writing.“This shows Government arrogance and unilateral move to bulldoze all the Financial Business without discussing them on the floor of the house,” said the submission.Seeking speaker’s immediate intervention to protect the rights of the MPs, the submission further says that the government is not taking any initiative to ensure smooth functioning of the House.
Even while the ruling BJP had issued whip to the party MPs in the Lok Sabha, there was no respite from the logjam in both the Houses of Parliament.
The NDA floor managers in both the Houses of Parliament are learnt to have renewed attempts to reach out to the Opposition leaders to find a way out so that discussions on the Finance Bill could take place.
Both the Houses of Parliament couldn’t conduct business Tuesday for seventh straight days since the resumption of the second half of the Budget session with the din prevailing.
The Opposition stuck to the demand that the Chairs in both the Houses accept the Adjournment motions on the issue of banking scam, which would entail voting. The government, however, is agreeable to debate on the issue without voting with the caveat that all scams which took place in Independent India would be discussed.
The BJP Parliamentary party meeting in the morning also saw the party leaders slamming the Congress for obstructing the functioning of the Parliament.
“The Congress is obstructing the functioning of the Parliament. The Congress is anti-democratic. It was the Congress which had imposed Emergency, besides extending the tenure of the government by one year,” Ananth Kumar told reporters.