Gandhi setting the tone

With Gandhi setting the tone, her
Congress colleagues took on the BJP aggressively.
Manmohan Singh, who spoke
on the subject for the first time Monday,
meanwhile left for Iran to attend the
NAM summit.
An unexpected attack on the Congress
Tuesday came from the Samajwadi
Party, which said the parliamentary logjam
was probably aimed at replacing
Manmohan Singh as prime minister by
Rahul Gandhi.
"It is possible that some people in the
Congress want to replace Manmohan
Singh with Yuvraj (Rahul Gandhi). Is internal
politics of the Congress not coming
into play?" Samajwadi MP Mohan
Singh said.
The CPI-M's Sitaram Yechury accused
both the Congress and the Bharatiya
Janata Party of "match fixing" -- a suggestion
that the two were in league over
parliament's paralysis.
The government and the Congress
have denied the charge.
Manmohan Singh called the CAG report
flawed. But a Comptroller and Auditor
General official said they stood by
the report and would respond "at the
appropriate time".
The BJP's insistence on not letting
parliament function till Manmohan
Singh goes doesn't have the support of
at least one of its allies and some others
in the opposition. But the BJP refuses to
change course.
Gandhi told her MPs that after the
prime minister's elaborate statement,
there was no need for the Congress to be
defensive.
"We are now entering a period in
which elections will consume much of
our time," she said of the upcoming
state elections.
"We will not be deflected by intemperate
Congress bashing by the opposition.
Let us stand up and fight, fight with
a sense of purpose and fight aggressively,"
she said.
She accused the BJP of showing scant
respect for democratic values and for
mocking the people of India "for the
convincing mandate given to us".
The BJP remained unrelenting.
Responding to Gandhi's charge of
"blackmail", BJP leader Arun Jaitley said:
"A government whose integrity has been
painted black in the coal deals cannot
be blackmailed."
BJP chief spokesman Ravi Shankar
Prasad added: "We don't need certificates
of responsibility from the Congress.
We want conduct of
accountability from the government."
The prime minister had said that
some of the non-Congress chief ministers
too had favoured discretionary allocation
of coal blocks.
Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs
Rajeev Shukla underlined the
point: "They (BJP) are running away
from a debate. They are trying to save
their chief ministers (from being exposed
in parliament)."
The alleged irregularities in coal block
allocation held up both the Lok Sabha
and Rajya Sabha, leading to their adjournment
for the day after recess.
In addition, Parliamentary Affairs
Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal said BJP's
tactics of obstructing functioning of parliament
over its demands reeked of fascism
and accused the opposition party
of a "diabolical design to subvert the
system".
While the Congress has rejected the
Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) demand
for resignation of Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh, Bansal rejected its demand
of cancellation of allotment of the
coal blocks.
He said the BJP was negating the parliamentary
system with its tactics to stall
parliament over its demand for the
prime minister's resignation over the report
on coal block allocation by the
Comptroller and Auditor General.
Bansal said the BJP was not prepared
for discussion under any rules and was
feeling free in its "self-proclaimed
majesty of self-isolation".
He said the BJP concedes that the government
has a majority in the house but
wants its view to prevail.
"This is nothing short of fascism... it
reminds you of fascism," Bansal said.
He said the opposition party had no
faith in parliamentary devices.
On the coal blocks allotment, he said:
"I can say it in my personal capacity that
there is no question of cancelling the allotments
as nothing wrong has been
done."
Bansal's attack on BJP came on a day
Congress party president Sonia Gandhi
also lambasted the party for stalling proceedings
of the house since last week.
The CAG has estimated a presumptive
loss of Rs.1.86 lakh crore ($37 billion) because
of the coal blocks allocation between
2004 and this year.
Meanwhile, Industry lobby Assocham
said the political crisis was creating an
environment of suspicion and distrust
in the country.
"Assocham appeals to all stakeholders
to desist from putting emotions over
discretion in national interest," it said.
And no one really knows yet how long
this dirty game of politics will continue
to be played on the hallowed grounds of
the Parliament.