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Parliament witnessed one more day of disruptions Monday as the Treasury and Opposition Benches clashed over the BJP’s accusation that top Congress leaders were “colluding” with billionaire investor George Soros to “destabilise” the country.
Taken aback by this line of attack, plus the claim Friday that “wads of cash” had been recovered from the seat allotted to Congress Rajya Sabha MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi, the Opposition has accused the ruling party of deliberately raising issues to cause disruption as it is not interested in running the House.
Under the Narendra Modi government, almost every Parliament Session has been marked by similar antagonism on both sides, with the channels of communication that earlier allowed the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha to get past such disagreements having dried up.
Amid yet another adjournment Monday, Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar invited BJP president J P Nadda and Leader of Opposition in the House Mallikarjun Kharge to meet him to discuss smooth functioning of the House.
However, soon after, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned for the day.
Old-timers give the example of earlier years, when the government and Opposition were able to sit across a table, their differences notwithstanding. Late CPI leader A B Bardhan, for example, often narrated how in 2003 then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee invited the Left leaders for tea to seek their support to resolve a diplomatic issue between India and the US. Over tea, Vajpayee convinced Left leaders to protest in the House against India sending troops to Iraq; the Indian government didn’t want to make any such commitment to the US, but didn’t want the objection coming from its side.
Senior MPs also talk about the good networks previous Parliamentary Affairs Ministers such as Pramod Mahajan of the BJP and Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi of the Congress cultivated across the aisles, which came in handy to break the ice.
During UPA time, Vayalar Ravi, Prithviraj Chavan and Ghulam Nabi Azad held multiple rounds of talks with opposition parties, including the BJP, to run the House smoothly in the wake of the India-US nuclear deal.
Inside the House too, one could often see senior leaders walk across to the opposite side to chat with them or alert them about crucial Bills or statements in the House.
In this Lok Sabha, on the BJP side, only senior ministers such as Nitin Gadkari and Shivraj Singh Chouhan can be seen exchanging greetings with the Opposition. When things really hit an impasse, the party has in the past fallen back on the vast experience and friendships of a veteran like Rajnath Singh for trouble-shooting.
The breakdown of ties is equally visible from the Opposition side, particularly the new Congress. Again, here too, it is old-world leaders such as the late Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party and the National Conference’s Farooq Abdullah who are the few still remembered for warm ties with leaders cutting across party lines.
The Winter Session comes after a series of resounding Assembly poll wins for the BJP, putting its Lok Sabha setback in the shade. That explains part of its new aggression in the House.
However, as the Session enters the third week marked by disruptions, there is some amount of anxiety on both sides over a dysfunctional House.
In the Opposition ranks, the Congress leadership is facing questions from its own MPs and its allies over its insistence on raising the Adani issue – to the exclusion of all else. The INDIA bloc’s SP and Trinamool Congress have already disassociated themselves from the Adani protests, and want the House floor to be used to raise other issues such as the Sambhal mosque violence and Bangladesh.
After the first week was washed out, at INDIA bloc meetings for floor strategy, Congress allies, especially Left leaders, suggested that protests be more innovative rather than just shouting slogans, and should be confined largely to outside the House.
Leaders of the Congress and some other INDIA partners sporting pins and stickers on their jackets saying “Modi Adani Ek Hai” and “Adani Safe Hai” was part of this new strategy. However, they were preempted by the BJP raising its old Soros allegations against the Congress high command, leaving the latter with little choice but to launch into fresh protests.
Sources said this counter-strategy by the BJP was decided by a core group of the party, with many of its own MPs and leaders of alliance parties such as the TDP and JD(U) not in the loop.
The decision to up the ante on the Soros issue was surprising as the BJP had first raised it during the previous Lok Sabha, in 2023. Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections also, the BJP fielded senior spokespersons who accused Gandhi of taking the support of people who were close to or financially supported by Soros.
The fact that the BJP linked Soros this time to the OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project), which had come out with a report against the Gautam Adani Group, showed that the party was not going to be defensive about the businessman in the face of the Congress’s aggression. What may have set the tone for the BJP’s attack is that the Congress’s Adani pitch seemed to have hardly done anything for the latter in the Maharashtra elections.
The Congress Monday said that the real conspiracy unravelling in the Winter Session is that the government is willing to put at stake even India’s ties with the US to save Adani. After the BJP accused the US State Department of trying to “destabilise India” through part funding OCCRP that, it said, “targeted” Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the US Embassy in New Delhi had expressed its displeasure.
But more than the Soros line of attack, what has stunned some BJP ministers is the “cash” charge against Singhvi.
As per normal practice, if anything is found inside the chambers following a sitting, the Marshals or the Parliament Watch and Ward staff bring it to the attention of the member concerned. Leaders said they could not recall a single instance in the past of the presiding officer of the House (in this case, Dhankhar) making an announcement regarding this, and that too just when the House met for the day.
Incidentally, this follows the transfer of security duties of Parliament House to the CISF, from the Parliament Secretariat. While the Secretariat is an independent body, the CISF falls under the Union Home Ministry.
Senior MPs asked in private why Singhvi or any other member sitting in the same row as him in the Rajya Sabha was not contacted over the cash, or why efforts were not made to determine how the money landed in the chambers from the numerous CCTV cameras covering the premises.
Sources said that Dhankhar’s remarks that an investigation was on into whether the cash was “fake” meant that the rightful owner may be reluctant to come forward to claim the money.
An MP quipped, only half-jokingly: “Anything can be kept on my table – weed to condom – to create a story.”
