Late off the blocks, BJP lets comrades grab Opp space again

At the BJP Parliamentary party meeting this morning, it was decided that unless the government includes some of the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Rural Development, the party would move amendments to the bill.

BJP spokesman V K Malhotra said the party would move amendments to make the bill ‘‘universal and self-targetted’’ and not confine the jobs guarantee to ‘‘poor households.’’ It also wanted extension of the guarantee to be time-bound, and that workers be paid the minimum wage prevalent.

The amendments are no doubt sound—except what the BJP came out with today has been said by Sonia Gandhi at the start of the current session, thrashed out in detail between Left MPs and ministers over the past few days, and has been incorporated in the bill. Even as Malhotra talked of making the bill ‘‘universal’’, the government circulated a list of amendments to MPs which dropped the word ‘‘poor’’ before households.

In keeping with suggestions of the Congress and the Left, the government has also enhanced the Centre’s contribution to the scheme from 75 per cent to 90 per cent and has assured that the bill—targetting 200 districts—would cover the country within five years.

The only fresh amendment proposed by the BJP is that the bill should cover the urban poor, as well. But that is being dismissed as a facetious argument at this stage. ‘‘How can the Rural Development Ministry, which is moving the bill, include urban areas?’’ asked a leader closely associated with the formulation of the bill.

The BJP’s failure to play an interventionist role on the bill, sources said, was glaring because senior BJP leader Kalyan Singh was the head of the Standing Committee which studied it and made unanimous recommendations weeks ago. Other senior BJP leaders such as Kalraj Mishra, Keshubhai Patel and Annasahib Patil were members of the panel. Yet, it left the field open to the Left which is likely to run away with much of the credit for the amended bill.

Even today, there was little coordination within the BJP on the issue. None of the three MPs—V K Malhotra, Kharabela Swain, and Santosh Gangwar—who plan to move amendments tomorrow are members of the Standing Committee. And they did not have any prior discussions with Kalyan Singh, who is slated to be the main BJP speaker on the bill.

A member of the Standing Committee conceded that the BJP’s failure to make its views public on such a key ‘‘pro-people’’ legislation reflected the disarray within. ‘‘Our leaders are so busy fighting internal opposition, they have no time to play the role of Parliamentary opposition,’’ he said.