NEW DELHI: The coming week of the Winter Session of Parliament is hinged not on legislative business, but on a ‘resolution’. The government till now has refused to adopt one that would become a formal admonition of all hate-speech makers, without naming Minister Niranjan Jyoti, but the Opposition is equally adamant.
How the next few days pan out depends which side can spring the surprise. The trouble-shooters of the NDA Government, particularly Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu, are of the view that the Opposition have “unnecessarily’’ raised their stake and helping them climb down is not the government’s job.
The nine Opposition parties, which issued a joint statement seeking a parliamentary resolution on Friday, were on Saturday offering to adopt Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention in Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha on the issue as the text of the resolution. This the government’s negotiators see as a “desperation’’ attempt to wriggle out of a sticky situation.
Jyoti’s “rural background’’ as underlined by PM in both the Houses is also seen by Jaitley as the government’s trump card. “If they (the Opposition) rub the point against her too much, it will boomerang on them,’’ Naidu, in fact, blurted it out.
On the political front, the BJP had a protest rally in Delhi organised by her caste group, Nishad-Mallah Samaj, in Delhi. Though not exactly Dalits, they’re a sizeable vote-bank in both Bihar and UP. A Mallah, “Jyoti is from the same caste as Phoolan Devi—Mulayam Singh should take this as a wakeup call,’’ a senior BJP leader told The Sunday Standard, hinting how the community has shifted its allegiance from SP to BJP, last election. This will consolidate the votes, he added.
The protest, if it snowballs, the BJP feels, will certainly bring about cracks in the Opposition unity in the Rajya Sabha, where the government is in minority. However, the opposition is also not moving without a strategy. As Congress leader Anand Sharma said, “Running Parliament is not the Opposition’s responsibility, nor is the onus of passing bills.’’ The Opposition, therefore, may allow Question Hour and Zero Hour to run, instead stall just the government’s legislative business which mostly takes place in the afternoon.
In the Rajya Sabha, the Central Universities (Amendment) Bill, the Textile Undertakings (Nationalisation) Laws Amendment and Validation Bill and the School of Planning and Architecture Bill, are scheduled to be taken up. All of them have been passed by the Lok Sabha. Nothing hot, not second generation reform bills, but regular amendments bills which will go a long way in streamlining functioning of the government.
The Insurance Bill on which a lot is at stake and which the government admittedly wants to pass during the Winter Session will be ready by next week. It’s still pending with the Select Committee. So, the government feels it has a week’s time to break the logjam and the opposition feels it’s in no hurry to relent.
Nonetheless, the strife over legislative business in the House has caught the NDA Government early on. And, the BJP’s aggressive rallies in Kolkata and its campaign in Delhi, and underlying strategies in UP and Bihar, is what may cost the government its legislative agenda henceforth. The dream run that it had, passing nine bills in the Lok Sabha and six in the Rajya Sabha, including labour reform, may be getting to an end.