The Parliament Disruption: A Balance Sheet

The one month monsoon session of Parliament from 8th August to 7th September barely did any business for even a week and all other days were lost in the sound fury of protesting opposition Members upon the C A G’s report of loss of money to the exchequer in allocating coalfields to private companies for captive Mining.

The main opposition party, B J P, wanted the Prime Minister to resign since he was handling the coal Ministry during the time of scandal. The demand was not obviously acceptable and the disruption continued and it became a monotonous ritual in the coming days. Perhaps the B J P itself must have felt the monotony of the exercise, later the Party  climbed down from the demand  for resignation of the P M to cancelling the coal allocation deal with the companies in order to participate in the discussion at the Parliament. The Government was not ready to cancel the deal either and the disruption continued to the very end of the session.

The Prime Minister said that the disruption was anti-Democratic. It is true the whole exercise was anti democratic. The Prime Minister need not have to resign on the asking of a few Members. If the demand had Majority support naturally the P.M. would have to succumb to the demand. As such the  disruption of Parliament proceedings by the B J P in the Parliament was not only senseless but was an unparliamentary method also.

Yet,  the criticism against B J P was rather mild from the Press and the people and the possible reason for that was the enormity of the loss to the Government cited in the C A G’s report (Nearly 34 Billion Dollars) and the continuing  scenario of scams. The present one had a predecessor in the ‘Spectrum sale’  which also ‘enjoyed ‘ the same level of loss. Naturally the people, irrespective of their party affiliations wondered what was going on in the Government, giving B J P an invisible moral support.

There were 34 Bills to be passed in the session out of which only 4 bills could be passed and those too without any discussion.

It is said that an hour’s session of Parliament costs the exchequer about 25 Lakh Rupees and the entire loss when calculated on that line comes to 36 Crore rupees.

 It is a story of Losses all the way for the Monsoon session of Parliament,  just like this year’s Monsoon rains in India.




Image from Google