Congress in its blind hate for Modi will sadly stall Parliament again
Any mention of a Parliament session conjures up images of pandemonium and predicability of a near-total washout. The Budget session is scheduled to commence on February 23 and it is not hard to fathom that it, like the last year's Monsoon and Winter sessions, will be a disaster, and only the Railway Budget, general Budget and a few non-flagship type Bills may get Parliament's nod.
The groundwork for a ruckus in both houses of Parliament is already being prepared by the Opposition, particularly the Congress which is feeling deeply hurt at their top two leaders - party president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi - facing the ignominy of being summoned and appearing as accused in the Patiala House trial court in the National Herald transfer of shares case on December 19.
The two Nehru-Gandhis, who are on bail and are scheduled to appear again on February 20, have moved Supreme Court against the trial court's order of summoning them and the Delhi High Court's order quashing their plea to reject the Patiala House Court's directive.
The National Herald alleged cheating and misappropriation of funds case, which had ruined the Winter session of Parliament, again threatens to devour the forthcoming Budget session. If Supreme Court refuses to stay the orders of the trial court and Delhi High Court, Sonia and Rahul will appear before the Patiala House Court again on February 20, just three days before the Budget session starts.
The Budget session faces the threat of getting disrupted whether or not the trial court delivers a favourable ruling on February 20. Even if Supreme Court accepts the plea of the Nehru-Gandhis, the Congress is unlikely to spare the Parliament of its obstructionist agenda.
The National Herald case will be the main reason for disruption of Parliament session, but very much like the Winter session, there will be other issues which may disrupt the proceedings of the House. Hyderabad University student Rohith Vemula's alleged suicide, the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) case in which Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has levelled serious and personal allegations against Union finance minister Arun Jaitley, allotment of land to Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel's daughter Anar Patel and BJP MP Hema Malini allegedly at highly concessional rates will be some of those issues.
The BJP is set to return fire with fire. One got an indication of that when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while sounding the poll bugle in Assam on February 5, without naming Sonia or Rahul, accused "one family" of indulging in "negative politics" to obstruct parliamentary functioning.
While the Congress will attack the BJP for being "casteist" and "anti-Dalit", the ruling party would hit back at the principal opposition party over the assault on the Tanzinian woman in Bangalore and accuse it of being racist and misogynist.
Amidst all this hullabaloo, the victim, as usual will be governance - the passage of the big ticket reforms such as the goods and services tax (GST), real estate and bankruptcy Bills.
The Congress justifies the obstructionist approach by recalling the BJP's stalling of Parliament during the UPA-2 regime when the then leader of opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj argued, on September 7, 2012, that "not allowing Parliament to function is a form of democracy". Her counterpart in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley had too defended it as a legitimate and democratic tool of the opposition by saying on January 30, 2011, that "parliamentary obstruction is not undemocratic".
First, two wrongs do not make a right. Secondly, the Congress and other opposition parties would not be aiming at Swaraj, Jaitley or even the BJP, if at all they have to take revenge for the disruptions during the previous Lok Sabha. In their contrived agenda, their target is Modi who, incidentally, was only a chief minister and not even the BJP president - a post which was held by incumbent home minister Rajnath Singh at that time.
The approach of the Congress and other opposition parties proves that the prime minister remains their biggest threat and, hence, they would go to any extreme to hurt him by scuttling Parliament proceedings even though it harms national interest.