Author: Editorial
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: December 31, 2011
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/faking-it/894071/0

Actions do speak more than words. In the end, the seriousness of debate with which the Lower House of Parliament had gripped the nation on Tuesday — and put the sparsely crowded MMRDA grounds in Mumbai and Team Anna in cruel juxtaposition — bowed out before the filibustering in the Upper House on Thursday. The Lok Sabha debate had put the ball back in Parliament, and re-etched in public mind the supremacy and significance of the legislature. But many hours of useful debate in Rajya Sabha were eclipsed by a few minutes of needless controversy, undermining the advantage Parliament had regained for itself. All this, over a deeply flawed Lokpal and Lokayukta Bill 2011.

The buck must begin and come round to stop with the UPA government. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal defended his not taking up the amendments by claiming there were too many of them, which needed time to be studied. Why did Bansal wait for the proverbial eleventh hour to say so? If that is indeed what the UPA had in mind, could it not have come clean and told the House, simply and honestly, that it needed more time and therefore would prefer the bill taken up in due course, later? The Congress could have sought time beforehand and begun talking to its allies. Instead, even when the government unambiguously knew it did not have the numbers in Rajya Sabha, it insisted that it had a “comfortable majority”. Clearly, the Trinamool Congress was not on board, and it had declared it would move its amendment on the Lokayuktas. So the government went in, and went ahead, banking on the the SP, the BSP, the RJD, and perhaps even the TMC, staging a walkout to reduce the House strength. If the UPA had placed its hopes on mere straws in the wind, these too were too thin and too light.

The buck will find, in between, the opposition as well. The BJP and the Left may think they have got away with a clever, last-minute expression of a desire to sit through the night or return the day after. With a little honesty, government and opposition would both admit nobody wanted this wrong-headed bill passed in their wisdom. That sincerity was missing from Bansal’s protestations and the opposition’s one-upmanship. Meanwhile, Lalu Prasad should advise his colleague, Rajniti Prasad, on the parliamentary way to tear into a bill.