Govt should have consensus with Oppn on major issues: Jaitley

“The initiative to develop a consensus with the Opposition has to come from the government. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee keeps using the term cooperative federalism so often. Yet,there are (Opposition-ruled) states crying of discrimination,” Jaitley said at the National Executive Committee Meeting of FICCI.

Citing examples,he said the government failed to build a consensus with Opposition-ruled states on the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST). The bill has been introduced in Lok Sabha.

He said the Opposition is ready to see merit in GST but the government is “building some kind of mistrust” on it.

The government proposed GST to be rolled out as a combined levy in lieu of indirect taxes imposed by the Centre and the states.

Besides,the Centre is not approving an international airport in Uttar Pradesh as the Congress has no chance of coming to power there in the near future,Jaitley said.

“In Orissa,every second project is scuttled. In ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ programme,governments of 90 countries were represented but not the Government of India,” he said.

The senior BJP leader said the UPA government cannot use “compulsion of coalition politics” to justify some of its controversial decisions and alleged that there was lack of leadership in the ruling coalition.

Without naming Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,Jaitley said the leader of the government should be the leader of the coalition and the core of the coalition (the main party) should be strong.

“But the core itself has become a coalition,” he said,alluding to two power centres within the Congress and the government.

He took dig at Singh for failing to check corruption in his government and maintained he cannot put the blame on coalition partners (like DMK in case of 2G scam).

“If there is a misconduct,he cannot wait for three years before taking action. Leader must have the capacity to enforce the agenda and set ethics. He must have the capacity to take decisions and have the last word…Leadership is about deciding and enforcing decisions,” Jaitley said.

Jaitley alleged the mess in UPA is due to “self-inflicted problems and not problems of coalitions”

“The leader of a coalition has to be tall and it is the personality of the leader that must drive decision-making… the coalition partner (an apparent reference to DMK in the 2G case) should not have a veto on policy issues,” he said.

Jaitley said the proposed Lokpal Bill is another case in which the government did not take the opposition into confidence.

“There was no consultation with the Opposition on the Lokpal Bill. We were not even informally informed. The BJP has not even seen the draft of the Bill,” he said.

Jaitley said the norm in Parliament is that most legislations are passed through consensus but this was not the case now.