New Delhi:
The reverberation of what happened in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday night during the Lokpal Bill debate continues to be felt in the political circles. Now popularly known as the "Lokpal Bill fiasco", or the "midnight mayhem," the issue has brought into sharp focus the deep fissures between the Congress and its largest ally - Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress.
The Trinamool has squarely blamed the Congress for the fiasco, accusing it of handling the issue poorly. Mincing no words, Trinamool MP Derek Obrien told NDTV last night that the Congress treated it "sloppily" and overlooked all its objections to the Lokpal Bill while his party "behaved like a responsible ally". The Congress handled the situation "very very badly," he said.
"Let me be blunt about this. Let me not mince my words. The Congress handled the situation very very badly. Whether it was deliberate or sloppy...I am not questioning their motives, but am looking at the bottom line. It was a sloppy handling of an ally who were with them, we are with them and we wish to be with them. But if every time we are not going to be listened to...We are the only political party which has not gone jumping around from Delhi to Mumbai...we said we will only speak in Parliament or in the UPA," he said.
The huge divide was publicly displayed on Thursday as Mamata Banerjee's party moved two amendments asking for the anti-corruption Lokpal Bill to be purged of all references to Lokayuktas or state-level anti-corruption agencies. The Trinamool said the section on Lokayuktas in the Bill undermines the right of state governments to form their own graft laws. Despite reassurances and appeals from senior Congress leaders like Pranab Mukherjee, Ms Banerjee said she wanted her amendments to be put to vote.
Ms Banerjee's MPs say that their opposition to the Lokayukta section or Part 3 of the bill had been expressed at the Parliamentary Standing Committee, where the Bill was discussed and reviewed between August and December. "Our member raised the objections in the Standing Committee. And one of our leaders, Mr Kalyan Banerjee, raised the issue on the floor of Lok Sabha. After he made his speech on the floor of the House, we looked at the provision that came to us; it was pretty apparent that states still did not have the autonomy they were looking for. We didn't get what we were promised. So, we decided to move the amendment in the Rajya Sabha," Mr O'Brien told NDTV. His party says that like on other matters, the Congress showed little interest in or sensitivity to the concerns of its partner.
Mamata Banerjee's party had not shared the government's views on two more of its decisions recently, - once when it hiked petrol prices in November, and also when it decided to allow foreign super-chains like Wal-mart to set up stores in India. This decision was forced into cold storage thanks to Mamata's insistence.
Despite their rift coming out in the open, the government is trying to put up a brave front. "There are differences with allies, but won't say Trinamool Congress's approach is confrontational. We will speak to them," Home Minister P Chidambaram said yesterday.
It's not just its ally, the government also finds itself cornered over the opposition's allegations that it let the country down by manipulating the proceedings in the House to ensure that on Thursday night, the Lokpal Bill was not put to vote in the Rajya Sabha. The Lokpal refers to a new ombudsman agency with nine members who will investigate politicians and bureaucrats for corruption. But the government insists that it did not play dirty and blames the BJP for the fiasco.
On Thursday, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned at 12 am after an hour of chaos. The government said it needed time to study the nearly 200 amendments moved by different parties. It insists it did all it could to pass the crucial anti-corruption legislation before the midnight deadline expired, ending the Winter Session of Parliament. It was the BJP, it alleged, who halted the journey of the Bill by refusing to cooperate. "The opposition would rather see the nation fail than the government succeed," said Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Bansal.