Are opposition parties headed for a self-goal in Parliament?
NO WAY OUT After launching a debate on demonetisation, opponents took the disruption route
NEW DELHI: There could be an element of truth in parliamentary affairs minister Ananth Kumar’s assertion that the opposition parties are shifting the goalpost to disrupt Parliament.
The House was not allowed to function for the 13th consecutive day last Friday.
The opposition launched a debate on demonetisation in the Rajya Sabha at the start of the winter session, but decided to take the disruption route the very next day. Their demands were varied and cropped up at regular intervals — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s presence, his response to the debate, his apology for allegedly calling opposition parties supporters of black money, probe by a joint parliamentary committee, and discussion in the Lok Sabha under a motion that entails voting.
It’s debatable whether not allowing West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to take a lead role in opposing the government was an afterthought on the part of the Congress leadership or a strategic error by party deputy leader Anand Sharma, who has been criticised by many peers for agreeing to a debate in the upper house.
The Congress has since taken the lead in stalling Parliament proceedings. So much has been its commitment to demonetisation victims — real or imagined — that the party didn’t even find it fit to hold the government accountable for a railway accident that claimed 147 lives last month.
The opposition party didn’t go beyond perfunctory statements on the killing of seven officers and jawans in a terrorist attack on the Nagrota army camp on the outskirts of Jammu on November 29.
Asked about the impact of the much-hyped surgical strikes in the context of the Nagrota attack at the HT Leadership Summit on Friday, defence minister Manohar Parrikar’s reply was quixotic: “It introduced a degree of uncertainty (across the border).” Really! It’s a courageousstandpost-Nagrotaand themutilationof twojawans’bodies inseparateincidents,buttheoppositionpartiesremainunmindfulof it.
However sanctimonious and outraged NDA ministers might sound in their criticism of the opposition over its disruptive tactics, BJP strategists are gloating. So are Parrikar and railway minister Suresh Prabhu. A senior minister drew an analogy between the situation of the Congress in Parliament and that of a horseriding, sword-wielding warrior without scabbard and stirrups.
Where does the Congress go from here? It can keep disrupting Parliament till the last day of the winter session on December 16, a strategy that the NDA might not mind. After the ruling side conceded to the opposition’s demand for Modi’s intervention in the debate, the opposition’s justification for continuing the disruptions does not hold much ground.
The opposition’s strategy of indulging in negative tactics instead of exposing what former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called monumental mismanagement may not hold well with the country’s already harried population.