Why both BJP and Congress are to blame for Parliament logjam

The logjam in Parliament continues unabated, with little sign of a resolution of the imbroglio that threatens to wash out the entire monsoon session of Parliament. This will however not be the first time that an entire session has been rendered useless. In 2013, Parliament failed to enact any business in its winter session, on account of the BJP's decision to obstruct its functioning, much in the manner that the Congress is doing now.

The signs were there even before the session commenced. The Congress made it abundantly clear that nothing short of the resignations of the external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and the two chief ministers Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Singh Chouhan would suffice. The government refused to buckle, resulting in a high decibel standoff in Parliament sans any legislative work.

Reeling under the impact of its worst electoral drubbing, the Congress was down and out a year ago. However, revelations about Swaraj's bid to help Lalit Modi, Raje's affidavit in favour of, and her financial linkages with the former cricket administrator, and Vyapam-related deaths in Madhya Pradesh have helped the party find its voice once again. While the jury is still out on whether the Congress has bounced back into public reckoning, the standoff, especially after the suspension of 25 MPs, has certainly united the opposition.

During the time that United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-2 was in power, the Parliament only managed to transact 63 per cent of the work, given the frequent disruptions and obstructionist attitude of the BJP which was in the opposition. Arun Jaitley and LK Advani justified the washout of the entire monsoon session of Parliament in 2012 by terming "obstructionism as a legitimate tool of protest". It's another matter that now that Jaitley is in the government he finds the opposition's protests undemocratic.

Most political parties adopt positions depending on where they stand. The Congress, when in government, took recourse to suspending errant MPs obstructing the passage of the Women's Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha and 18 MPs opposing the passage of the Bill to create the separate state of Telangana.

The fact is that none of the political parties can occupy the moral high ground on this issue. When it comes to obstructing Parliament, both the national parties are guilty, for one reason or the other. There are no winners in this battle of attrition in Parliament, repeated adjournments and washouts of entire sessions. Sadly, it only adds and underlines the deep mistrust and cynicism that people have of our parliamentarians.