The Hindu Business Line : Battle ground Parliament

That a huge amount of money is being spent to run a single day of Parliament may have pricked the conscience of some in the beginning. Today, it is doubtful if it troubles the scruples of members any more.

LAST week Parliament was under a virtual siege by an indignant Opposition. The truth is the entire political class is responsible for the way business is often stalled in both the Houses.

There is a constant sense of déjà vu, though the dramatis personae change. What we saw last week was the same old drama of one group, seemingly upholding democratic values, accusing the other of total disregard for the same.

So, four precious days of the all-important Budget session were lost even as a heavy agenda of business awaited the lawmakers.

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, the main Opposition, was certainly justified in its sense of outrage at what had happened in Jharkhand and Goa. But couldn't its MPs have allowed at least Question Hour to go on? After all, Parliament resolutions have held Question Hour inviolable and cannot be dispensed with, come what may.

Till the advent of mandal/mandir politics, such issues as Goa and Jharkhand were taken up during Zero Hour, followed usually by a proper discussion in which both sides were heard. Came the days of fragile coalitions, the sanctity attached to Question Hour got gradually diluted.

Any political event in some part of the country or the other began to have its immediate echo on Question Hour, the first Hour of Parliament. Presiding officers found it wise and easy to adjourn the house in a bid to buy peace. Because of the increasingly stiff stand of both the Treasury Benches and the Opposition, the adjournments came to be extended for the whole day.

If it is BJP and its allies that are disrupting Parliament today, it was Congress and its friends till a few months ago.

The conduct of political parties and politicians over the years has taken away the right of any group to adopt a "holier than thou" attitude vis-à-vis any other.

Wasting Parliament time is a crime against democracy, a crime against the people, the teeming millions who, braving sun and rain, heat and cold stood in serpentine queues to vote their representatives to the nation's highest legislative body with a mandate to work for their (voters') welfare.

Well, all this is not to make light of what happened in Goa and Jharkhand. The Jharkhand episode was most brazen.

The Governor, Syed Sibte Razi, a former Union minister and till recently a Rajya Sabha member and Congress spokesman who had campaigned hard for the party during the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, has exposed himself to charges of partisanship. He acted in haste to install Mr Shibu Soren as chief minister without verifying the majority claimed by the BJP-led group. Perhaps, in an unprecedented move, the President, Mr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, summoned Mr Razi to Delhi for an explanation.

The BJP's action in parading the 41 MLAs, supporting the party, before Mr Kalam was reminiscent of the days of Indira Gandhi and her coterie in the 1980s.

How can one forget the scene of N. T. Rama Rao bringing a trainload of his MLAs all the way from Hyderabad to Delhi that hot September two decades ago to prove that he enjoyed a majority in the State Assembly even though his government was sacked at the instance of some overzealous, young Congress leaders, expecting a split in NTR's Telugu Desam Party.

How NTR was reinstated within days and how the Congress leadership had to eat its humble pie is now part of the political folklore of the country, especially Andhra Pradesh.

(The author, a former Deputy Editor of PTI, is a New Delhi-based freelance journalist.)

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