It was 15 December 2016 when Parliament's Winter Session was on, in the backdrop of the demonetisation announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Congress and other opposition parties were pressing for a debate on the subject and wanted the prime minister to explain the reform. The ruling party said, 'okay', but only after the Congress first answers on the AgustaWestland helicopter deal.
Both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha were adjourned. Senior parliamentarian and leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, commented, “It is for the first time in the history of India that it is the ruling party that is not letting the House function.”
The BJP is not only credited with the top honours in terms of its own government not letting the house function that day, but also with disrupting Parliament for the maximum working hours while in the opposition. So much so that the Congress and other current opposition parties appear to have learnt their lessons of how to be an opposition from the BJP.
Consider this: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley as leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha in August 2012 favoured parliamentary disruptions. In an article titled Defending the Indefensible, Jaitley said, “If parliamentary accountability is subverted and a debate is intended to be used merely to put a lid on parliamentary accountability, it is then a legitimate tactic for the opposition to expose the government through parliamentary instruments available at its command.”
That is exactly what the Congress is doing now in the course of the Winter Session of Parliament, which remained obstructed all through the first five days ending Friday. The Congress wants Prime Minister Modi to clarify his statements against former prime minister Manmohan Singh during a campaign rally in Gujarat.
To recall, Modi had charged Singh with colluding with Pakistan to engineer a victory for the Congress in Gujarat in order to install Ahmed Patel as chief minister. Patel is a Muslim and Pakistan is not a friendly neighbour.
This statement from Gujarat's best-known son was seen as aimed at polarising votes along communal lines in the state that has not been allowed to forget the Godhra riots. Modi's statement also came late into his campaign in Gujarat, at a time when ground reports suggested that it would not be a cakewalk for the BJP.
Surely, the Congress will not allow the fair name of its two-term prime minister to be so tarnished, and nothing short of an explanation—possibly with supporting evidence—would appease the party.
Jaitley, while in opposition, had also argued that disruption should not be described as preventing work from being done, because “what we are doing is very important work itself.” Defending their top leader's image and the party's credibility is definitely what Congress leaders consider a serious part of their work.
But this is not the first time the Congress has obstructed the functioning of Parliament.
In July 2015, the Congress and the rest of the opposition wanted External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to go on grounds of the Lalit Modi fracas, without discussion—just the way the BJP had wanted UPA ministers to resign. Resign first, discuss later, they had told the Congress then.
“No discussion without resignation. Sushma has done a criminal act,” said then Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi. Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje too had supported Lalit Modi's case for passport and visas before the British Government. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was quagmired in the Vyapam scandal. The entire Monsoon Session was a washout that year; time lost in the Lok Sabha was 56 per cent and in Rajya Sabha 91 per cent.
In the winter of 2014, there were frequent disruptions in the Lok Sabha, but the Rajya Sabha was stalled for over a week continuously. The opposition, in majority in the upper house, united on the issue of minorities after Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti had made a controversial comment in the course of electioneering in Delhi. It was only after Prime Minister Modi apologised that the opposition relented.
Lost in that session was an insurance bill that Jaitley had brought in. Ironically, the Congress had introduced that very bill in 2008. But they nevertheless obstructed Parliament in a spirit of tit for tat! Jaitley called the Congress obstructionists.
In the 15th Lok Sabha, during the UPA-2 government, the BJP's disruption of Parliament resulted in loss of 61 per cent of working time in the Lok Sabha, and 66 per cent in the Rajya Sabha, according to parliamentary research institute prsindia.org.
When the first Congress-led UPA government was in power, the house recorded productive time of 549 of 768 hours. In the first five sessions of the current BJP-led NDA, the Lok Sabha functioned for 704 of the 711 hours, suggesting that there were fewer disruptions.
After the first eight sessions of Parliament in UPA I, the sitting time lost to disruptions was 38 per cent, then a record, indicating that the party that now rules resorted to disrupting Parliament more frequently over their years in opposition.
The maximum time lost in a session was in the winter of 2010, when a ferocious BJP demanded a Joint Parliamentary Committee be set up to probe into the 2G Scam—94 per cent time was lost in the Lok Sabha and 98 per cent in the Rajya Sabha. Coming close was the Monsoon Session of 2012, when the Lok Sabha worked for 20 per cent of the scheduled time, and Rajya Sabha for 27 per cent of scheduled hours.
Neither Modi nor BJP president Amit Shah, nor for that matter Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and Rajya Sabha chairperson Venkaiah Naidu, can charge the Congress with disrupting Parliament anywhere near what the BJP has done. For, the Monsoon Session of 2016 saw the working hours of Lok Sabha touch 101 per cent, and the Rajya Sabha 96 per cent. The Monsoon Session of 2017 similarly saw the Lok Sabha working for 67 per cent, and the Rajya Sabha for 72 per cent of the allocated time.
While Jaitley as leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha had justified obstruction of Parliament as a legitimate tool of democracy, his then Lok Sabha counterpart Sushma Swaraj had waxed eloquent, “We had to stall Parliament to expose the government and its corruption. Anyway, it is the government's job to run the Parliament, not that of the opposition.”
Now when Congress president Rahul Gandhi tells his team to take on the BJP in Parliament, the team will take a leaf out of the BJP's book .And it is going to be business as usual in Parliament. With obstructions and disruptions. For while the tables have turned, nothing else has.
