Opinion Too cavalier by half
More than the Opposition,MPs from HRD Minister Kapil Sibals own party ensured that the Education Tribunal Bill was not passed by the Rajya Sabha.
More than the Opposition,MPs from HRD Minister Kapil Sibals own party ensured that the Education Tribunal Bill was not passed by the Rajya Sabha. Oscar Fernandes,chairperson of the Parliamentary standing committee on education,did not hide his annoyance that not a single one of the 22 recommendations for the bill by the committee was incorporated in the final draft. Sibal,while brushing aside the objections raised by his fellow parliamentarians,should have at least paused to consider that Rahul Gandhi is one of the committee members! In the cabinet meeting,C P Joshi launched an angry broadside against the bill and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggested that Sibal and Joshi meet to sort out differences. However,a subsequent discussion did not take place. Seeing which way the wind was blowing,the opening speaker from the Congress in the Rajya Sabha, Keshava Rao,tore into the bill. He used such strong words that they were later expunged by the chairperson.
Instead of personally discussing the bill with Opposition parliamentary party leaders like Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley,Sibal simply sent the additional secretary in the HRD to explain.
Many pedigreed claimants
There are five vacancies in Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavans cabinet. And there are four candidates with powerful pedigrees in line for a ministerial berth. The sons of President Pratibha Patil,Heavy Industry Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and State Revenue Minister Narayan Rane as well as Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shindes daughter want to be made ministers. The problem is if only one or two offspring are included in the state cabinet,the influential parents of the others will be up in arms. This has led to a stalemate of sorts.
Suspense till the last
In contrast to Sibal,Science and Technology Minister Prithviraj Chavan went out of his way to accommodate the Opposition over the Nuclear Civil Liability Bill. Till the last moment,the Congress was unsure whether the BJP would back the bill or not. An hour before the bill was to be introduced in the upper house,the suspense mounted as deputy Opposition leader in Rajya Sabha,SS Ahluwalia,cancelled his lunch appointment with Chavan on the excuse that senior leaders in his party were still debating the issue. It was only when Chavan entered the House and learnt that Jaswant Singh would start the debate for the BJP,that he breathed a sigh of relief. If the lead speaker had been Yashwant Sinha,that would have been a signal that the party would vote against the bill. Pressure from the diplomatic world and the private sector seems to have played a role in bringing around the BJP.
Roadblock cleared
Appointments and promotions for the chairpersons of eight banks and ten executive directors in public sector banks were held up from February to August. The delay was due to the Personnel Department where a desperate attempt was afoot to tweak existing banking guidelines so that a few Congress leaders from UP could be obliged. After 40 MPs complained to the Prime Minister of the holdup,Manmohan Singh personally asked to see the file. The PMO overruled the objections of the establishment officer and the cabinet secretariat and cleared the file in a single day last week. He went entirely by the recommendations of the screening committees.
Crossed connection
The fact that the BJP took opposite positions towards three important bills in the upper and lower house of Parliament suggests a lack of coordination between Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley. In fact,the BJPs opposition to the Torture Bill surfaced only after the Left parties highlighted the bills various infirmities. While the communists object that the bill is not tough enough against police officers accused of torture,the BJPs reservation is that mental harassment of a detainee is too vague a provision to merit a ten-year sentence.
Double standards
CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat insisted that Somnath Chatterjee step down as Speaker in the 14th Lok Sabha on the ground that it would be unethical for him to continue as Chatterjee had been elected Speaker when his party was backing the UPA. But four Left MPs,D Raja and Aziz Pasha of the CPI,and T K Rangarajan and P Madhu from the CPI(M),who got elected to the Rajya Sabha thanks to surplus votes from the Congress and other UPA allies were not asked to make a similar sacrifice after the Congress and the Left parted company. The two CPM MPs are central committee members and naturally,no one wanted to upset them.
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