A day after the UPA government suffered defeat in the Lok Sabha on the 116th Constitution Amendment Bill over the Lokpal,the House was adjourned for the day today abruptly in the evening after the BJP demanded voting on the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill 2010 and the 114th Constitution Amendment Bill that seeks to raise the retirement age of high court judges from 62 years to 65. After about five hours of debate on the Bills,which were taken together,Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj demanded that the Chair undertake voting on both. The members of the ruling party have gone on vacation to celebrate the New Year. Discussion on this subject is being extended as the government does not have the requisite numbers, Swaraj said,pointing out that the discussion had gone beyond the four hours allocated by the business advisory committee (BAC). However,Swarajs demands were overuruled by the Chair,saying: Decisions of the BAC are not final. The House is supreme. Treasury benches,with Sonia Gandhi present,objected to the BJPs demand,even as Congress MPs trickled into the House. Girija Vyas,who was presiding over the proceedings,then called the name of Mohammed Basheer of the Muslim League to continue the discussion,but eventually cut him short and took up the supplementary business. She called Minorities Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid to make a statement regarding creation of a sub-quota of 4.5 per cent for minorities within the 27 per cent reservation for OBCs. Amid protests over this from the BJP,as well as the JD(U) and Samajwadi Party,Khurshid did not yield and finished his statement,after which Vyas adjourned the House for the day. Team Anna targets Cong high command Anna Hazare may have called off his fast but his team continued to target the Congress party by firing salvos against the high command (Congress president Sonia Gandhi) on Twitter. We have witnessed autocracy of high command. Are we seeing MPs representing the will of their constituencies who voted them to Parliament, tweeted Kiran Bedi. Getting Janlokpal sooner or later will not happen without regime change. Time alone will tell when? read another tweet from her. Arvind Kejriwal tweeted,MPs do not have the freedom to speak or vote against wishes of Party High Command (PHC). Arent MPs bonded labors of PHC? At MMRDA grounds,barely an hour before Hazares announcement that both the fast and the subsequent jail bharo are off,Kejriwal said: The definition of democracy in our country has changed from for the people,by the people and of the people to for the party high command,by the party high command and of the party high command. He tweeted the statement later in the evening and described India as a dictatorship of the party high command between two elections. Their tweets came soon after Hazare said he would campaign against Congress,which he said,had cheated them the maximum.
