Can our MPs do anything other than humiliate India?

The monsoon session of Parliament ends on August 13. It will rank as the least productive of the four sessions under the Narendra Modi government.

Taxpayers' money - Rs 260 crore per session, according to an official estimate computing the cost of running both Houses at Rs 2.50 lakh per minute for six hours a day - is not the only loss when a parliamentary session is washed out.

Unless an important legislation such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Constitutional Amendment Bill is passed, following its introduction in the Rajya Sabha today amidst Congress-led chaos leading to adjournment of the House, the national exchequer will suffer significant additional financial and other losses.

In mature democracies, such parliamentary session washouts are unheard of. The British House of Commons has never been disrupted for an entire session. Examples of "grave disorder" in the British Parliament are fewer than 50 in over a century - roughly one disruption every two years. Disruptions, on average, last less than 30 minutes before the Speaker ensures Parliament resumes normal business.

During the monsoon session, opposition members have stormed the well of the House and waved large placards in the face of Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan. Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi have not just condoned such behavior but, by gesture and word, instigated it.

The BJP is not blameless. It disrupted a whole session of Parliament in the winter of 2010-11 demanding the setting up of a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) to examine the 2G spectrum scam. Moreover, the BJP's floor management in the current session, instead of being clinical and authoritative, allowed the situation to drift. Such diffidence when the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has 337 Lok Sabha MPs is inexplicable. The deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha, PJ Kurien, has not enhanced his reputation either by allowing the Congress to disrupt the House without penalising its MPs as the Lok Sabha Speaker rightly did.

During the Vajpayee government's tenure, former defence minister George Fernandes was "boycotted" for 22 months by the Congress following allegations over defence deals in Tehelka's sting Operation West End. Fernandes was eventually cleared by a one-judge commission headed by Justice Phukan. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-1 government was dissatisfied with Fernandes' exoneration. It appointed another commission headed by Justice Venkataswami. That commission too cleared Fernandes of wrongdoing.

India's Parliament works for fewer days than most other countries' legislative bodies. The US Senate sits for an average of 180 days a year. The US House of Representatives is in session for 126 days annually. Britain's House of Commons meets for an average 130 days a year. France's National Assembly sits for 149 days annually.

The Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha in contrast sit only for 80 days a year spread over three sessions - budget, monsoon and winter. Disruptions and adjournments compress that total, often by half.

The disruptions caused in the ongoing monsoon session have been over especially divisive issues. The Congress insists external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje and Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan must resign before it "allows" the Parliament to function and the GST Bill to be passed into law.

In effect, what the Congress is saying is this: Swaraj, Raje and Chouhan are presumed guilty - prior to investigation or court summons. They must resign and only then will the Congress let the Parliament function. It is to the BJP government's discredit that it hasn't yet been able to demolish a position that presumes guilt without investigation, without prosecution, and without trial. Let's examine the three cases.

First, Vyapam. The CBI has just begun investigating the scam. The Congress argument of "resignation first, inquiry later" is thus clearly invalid. Till the CBI files multiple chargesheets, Chouhan's role in the scam, if any, can't be determined.

Second: Sushma Swaraj. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi accuses her of recommending that the British government grant the controversial former Indian Premier League (IPL) chief, Lalit Modi, temporary travel documents. Is that true?

In 2012-13, the then home minister P Chidambaram wrote two "secret" letters (yet undisclosed and unpublished) to the British government. The letters warned that India-UK relations would be affected if Lalit Modi was given travel documents. His passport had been revoked in March 2011. For three years, the UPA-2 government did little else, apart from Chidambaram's two secret letters, to bring Lalit Modi back to India. The enforcement directorate (ED) did not move an Indian court to obtain an order in absentia against Lalit Modi on money laundering charges. This would have enabled the government to ask Interpol to issue a red corner notice. Between 2010 and 2014, therefore, the UPA-2 government made no serious effort to prosecute Lalit Modi.

In July 2014, Swaraj informed the British government that India-UK relations would, in fact, not be affected if the British government decided independently, based on its own regulations, to give Lalit Modi temporary travel documents to visit his cancer-striken wife in Portugal. In effect, therefore, Swaraj undid Chidambaram's two secret letters to the British government linking India-UK relations to Lalit Modi's travel documents.

Did she recommend to the British government that Lalit Modi be given temporary travel documents? No. She left it entirely to the discretion of the British government to issue - or not issue - temporary travel documents. This point has been obfuscated by the clever media managers of the Congress. The not-so-clever media managers of the BJP have been unable - again quite inexplicably, because the facts are so clear - to establish this point successfully.

Where Swaraj erred was not routing her advisory on India-UK relations through the external affairs ministry bureaucracy and the Indian high commission in Britain. But to equate this "impropriety" with the 2G and Coalgate scams, as Congress leaders are doing, is disingenuous at best, specious at worst.

Third, Vasundhara Raje. Her case is the weakest owing to her former close links to Lalit Modi in Rajasthan. But if there have been illicit land deals or financial transactions between her family and Lalit Modi - and if she signed a secret affidavit supporting Lalit Modi's case on his travel papers - the obvious step the opposition must take is to register an FIR and file a public interest litigation (PIL) in court. All the evidence - for or against Raje - will emerge during the court hearings. It is odd that the Congress, with its vast retinue of in-house lawyers, has not yet done so. It wants resignations without an inquiry and has held the House (and the crucial GST Constitutional Amendment Bill) to ransom on such facetious grounds.

In August 2014, weeks after Swaraj rescinded Chidambaram's secret letters to the British government, the Delhi High Court reinstated Lalit Modi's passport. Stung by media criticism that it was soft on an undeclared "fugitive", the NDA government has now obtained a non-bailable warrant against Lalit Modi. A red corner Interpol notice could follow.

None of this will end the Congress' disruption of Parliament. The objective is not to seek justice or debate issues but to erode the Modi government's credibility ahead of a slew of state Assembly elections. By overreaching itself, however, the Congress has achieved the opposite goal: its own credibility has been eroded and unity with other opposition parties broken.

By not succumbing to intense pressure (including violent protests by shirtless Youth Congress workers outside her residence) to revoke the suspensions of 25 Congress MPs for persistent uncouth behaviour in the Lok Sabha last week, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan set a good precedent. In any other democratic country, persistently unruly legislators would not have been suspended for five days. They could well have been expelled. The chairperson and deputy chairperson of the Rajya Sabha know this. It would be remiss of them if they did not act accordingly.

If the Congress continues to disrupt the Parliament, important legislative business like the GST Bill may now be deferred to the winter session and beyond, costing India more than just the wasted expenditure of Rs 260 crore over a disrupted session.

Clearly, parliamentary procedure needs reform, including evictions, suspensions and, as a last resort, expulsions of MPs engaging in behavior unacceptable in any civilised workplace.