Wednesday in the Lok Sabha turned out to be more lively than usual.
First External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took the floor to engage in a bit of first-class whataboutery, trying to defend her own actions by pointing out all the bad things the Congress has done in the past. Then Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi explained how he knew Swaraj had done something wrong: By claiming she didn't look him in the eye while talking.
Then came Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with some familiar complaints. Ever since he took up the job of Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha, having pulled off the feat of losing in a "wave" election, Jaitley seems to have become more and more angry. In May, he attempted to threaten the Rajya Sabha – the House that allows him to be in Parliament – insisting that an "indirectly elected" house should not be questioning the wisdom of the "directly elected" one.
A little later, almost everyone in the Bharatiya Janata Party turned out to defend Swaraj. Everyone, that is, except for Jaitley, who hasn't always had the most amiable of relationships with the External Affairs Minister. It wasn't until the omission was more than evident, that Home Minister Rajnath Singh collected the two other Raisina Hill ministers together and came to some sort of agreement.
Important bills
Jaitley had to support Swaraj, by BJP diktat, but also because he had another battle to fight. Two of Modi's most important pieces of legislation, taken up reportedly at Jaitley's insistence, appeared to be dead on arrival. The Modi government has officially retreated on the Land Acquisition Amendment Bill, effectively reverting to the way it was under the United Progressive Alliance government, even though Modi appeared to have staked his word on it.
Now even the Goods and Services Tax, which Jaitley has attempted to shepherd through Parliament, is stuck. Jaitley promised it the GST would be in place by the start of the next financial year, in April, but because it is a Constitutional Amendment requiring work with every one of the state legislatures, getting it through in the next session will be a mammoth task.
Neither looks likely to pass this Monsoon session, with just one day left, leaving an angry Jaitley. So angry, it would seem, that articles from those who have championed Modi, like Firstpost's R Jagannathan, suddenly disappear if they are calling for the Finance Minister's head.
Jaitley is done trying to insist that the Congress is simply out to achieve political gain. He's gone on to now arguing that the Opposition, which has been stalling Parliament, specifically doesn't want India to do well. "The real purpose is that they want to stall the economic progress of the country. The issue relating to the external affairs minister is merely a pretext. The real reason is that they don’t want the Indian economy to grow," Jaitley said.
In the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, though, after the Congress had already walked out, Jaitley gave a speech with a portion that could be easily used to explain just about any time Parliament doesn't function. "My sympathies are with Sushmaji because she is a pretext, a scapegoat," Jaitley said. "The real reason was, they wanted to prevent GST."
A pretext, a scapegoat and an intention to prevent any business: this applies to practically any disruption of Parliament over the last decade. Any headline that begins with "Uproar in Parliament" for that matter. Think back to the Indo-US nuclear deal, which the BJP now happily champions, when the pretext was former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh allegedly "misleading" Parliament or the Nathuram Godse-is-a-patriot controversy, when the Congress attempted to get prime minister Narendra Modi to respond to the words of a BJP Member of Parliament. Or the BJP's agitation causing a washout in the wake of the Coalgate revelations. Or an argument over whether there should be a Joint Parliamentary Committee on the 2G spectrum scam, which led to yet another session being washed out.
None of this is to argue that these causes were wholly without import or that the disruption amounted to nothing. The charges against Swaraj are indeed much smaller compared to the charges against former telecom minister A Raja in the 2G case for example, but maybe more serious than the BJP's insistence that the PM must respond on the Walmart lobbying issue.
As Jaitley himself has sought to explain, "disruption can sometimes produce results that discussion cannot." Deciding whether those results are worth it, however, remain in the eye of the beholder.
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First External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took the floor to engage in a bit of first-class whataboutery, trying to defend her own actions by pointing out all the bad things the Congress has done in the past. Then Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi explained how he knew Swaraj had done something wrong: By claiming she didn't look him in the eye while talking.
Then came Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with some familiar complaints. Ever since he took up the job of Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha, having pulled off the feat of losing in a "wave" election, Jaitley seems to have become more and more angry. In May, he attempted to threaten the Rajya Sabha – the House that allows him to be in Parliament – insisting that an "indirectly elected" house should not be questioning the wisdom of the "directly elected" one.
A little later, almost everyone in the Bharatiya Janata Party turned out to defend Swaraj. Everyone, that is, except for Jaitley, who hasn't always had the most amiable of relationships with the External Affairs Minister. It wasn't until the omission was more than evident, that Home Minister Rajnath Singh collected the two other Raisina Hill ministers together and came to some sort of agreement.
Important bills
Jaitley had to support Swaraj, by BJP diktat, but also because he had another battle to fight. Two of Modi's most important pieces of legislation, taken up reportedly at Jaitley's insistence, appeared to be dead on arrival. The Modi government has officially retreated on the Land Acquisition Amendment Bill, effectively reverting to the way it was under the United Progressive Alliance government, even though Modi appeared to have staked his word on it.
Now even the Goods and Services Tax, which Jaitley has attempted to shepherd through Parliament, is stuck. Jaitley promised it the GST would be in place by the start of the next financial year, in April, but because it is a Constitutional Amendment requiring work with every one of the state legislatures, getting it through in the next session will be a mammoth task.
Neither looks likely to pass this Monsoon session, with just one day left, leaving an angry Jaitley. So angry, it would seem, that articles from those who have championed Modi, like Firstpost's R Jagannathan, suddenly disappear if they are calling for the Finance Minister's head.
Jaitley is done trying to insist that the Congress is simply out to achieve political gain. He's gone on to now arguing that the Opposition, which has been stalling Parliament, specifically doesn't want India to do well. "The real purpose is that they want to stall the economic progress of the country. The issue relating to the external affairs minister is merely a pretext. The real reason is that they don’t want the Indian economy to grow," Jaitley said.
In the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, though, after the Congress had already walked out, Jaitley gave a speech with a portion that could be easily used to explain just about any time Parliament doesn't function. "My sympathies are with Sushmaji because she is a pretext, a scapegoat," Jaitley said. "The real reason was, they wanted to prevent GST."
A pretext, a scapegoat and an intention to prevent any business: this applies to practically any disruption of Parliament over the last decade. Any headline that begins with "Uproar in Parliament" for that matter. Think back to the Indo-US nuclear deal, which the BJP now happily champions, when the pretext was former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh allegedly "misleading" Parliament or the Nathuram Godse-is-a-patriot controversy, when the Congress attempted to get prime minister Narendra Modi to respond to the words of a BJP Member of Parliament. Or the BJP's agitation causing a washout in the wake of the Coalgate revelations. Or an argument over whether there should be a Joint Parliamentary Committee on the 2G spectrum scam, which led to yet another session being washed out.
None of this is to argue that these causes were wholly without import or that the disruption amounted to nothing. The charges against Swaraj are indeed much smaller compared to the charges against former telecom minister A Raja in the 2G case for example, but maybe more serious than the BJP's insistence that the PM must respond on the Walmart lobbying issue.
As Jaitley himself has sought to explain, "disruption can sometimes produce results that discussion cannot." Deciding whether those results are worth it, however, remain in the eye of the beholder.