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| Activists from the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) participate in protest against government after the ruling coalition failed to get the Lokpal anti-graft bill passed in the Rajya Sabha |
India’s government faced fierce criticism in the media and from the opposition yesterday after it failed to push through its flagship anti-corruption law in the upper house of parliament.
The legislation cleared the Lok Sabha, the lower house, earlier in the week and the government had insisted it would put the Lokpal draft law to a vote in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house, on Thursday, the last day of an extended parliamentary session.
After more than 13 hours of debate, proceedings were finally adjourned shortly before midnight amid scenes of disorder and shouting from MPs described as a “midnight farce” by one newspaper.
The opposition and some news reports accused the government of orchestrating the disruption in a cynical ploy to have the house adjourned and avoid a vote it looked set to lose.
Minority parties in the Congress-led ruling United Progressive Alliance coalition had turned against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government and demanded amendments, meaning the law would have almost certainly failed to pass.
The Indian Express daily said the UPA had “egg on its face” while the Mail Today tabloid said the bill was now “in cold storage.”
The Trinamul Congress, an increasingly unreliable member of the UPA coalition which had demanded amendments to the law, called it a “shameful” day for democracy and a result of “orchestrated chaos.”
The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) repeated its call for Singh to resign and urged the government to hold fresh elections - demands that were unlikely to be heeded.
“The government was defeated in the Lok Sabha on the constitutional amendment bill and they ran away from voting in the Rajya Sabha... (It) has no right to retain power. The prime minister should tender his resignation, taking moral responsibility,” BJP president Nitin Gadkari said.
“At the stroke of midnight hour when the world slept, India awoke to a fraud being played on its parliamentary democracy,” added his colleague Arun Jaitley.
Thursday’s failure is another blow to the increasingly vulnerable Singh, whose administration had to withdraw another major reform earlier this month allowing foreign supermarkets to operate in India.
The future of the Lokpal bill is now uncertain, but it will most likely be revised and again presented to lawmakers in the budget session of parliament in late February.
There were more than 180 proposed amendments filed by the opposition during the debate on Thursday which the government has promised to examine.
“The bill is not in cold storage and will be taken up in the budget session,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Bansal promised yesterday.
He accused the BJP, which has struggled to benefit from the government’s recent difficulties, of sabotaging the legislation by filing contradictory amendments designed to prevent the passage of the law.
“The opposition parties would rather see the nation fail than the government succeed,” he said.
“My allegation is that they brought a large number of amendments only to see that the bill is not passed. Had we accepted all of them we would have led to a situation where parliament would have been rendered a laughing stock in the eyes of the people,” he said.
Upping the ante, Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the government was being blamed for the murder of democracy but “the assassins are blaming the victims.”
V G Verghese, at the Centre for Policy Research think-tank, said the failure to pass the Lokpal bill indicated the problems and divisions within the ruling coalition.
“It would be much better that instead of carrying on for the sake of carrying on, the government throws out it allies, hold fresh elections and reconstitute the parliament,” he said.
“But no one wants fresh elections,” he added.