It is evident that Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s uncharacteristically aggressive conduct in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday is a sign of the fast-growing distance between the government and the main Opposition party in Parliament even in terms of functionality.
This can hardly be said to be good for democracy, although sharp differences are to be expected as the BJP and Congress lie at opposing ends of the political spectrum and are fierce competitors for national attention.
Government business can suffer and the dignity of Parliament as an institution can be lessened if the two Houses do not conduct their work with the needed decorum. We saw a lot of this under UPA-2 when the Opposition parties often insisted on being obstructionist.
The Congress’ greatly depleted strength in the Lok Sabha has given the impression in the ongoing Budget Session — the BJP’s first as the ruling party after the recent election — that the ruling side has consciously adopted the course of not taking it seriously.
This, of course, has been most evident in the view strongly hinted at by Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and several Cabinet ministers that the elected leader of the former ruling party won’t be accorded the position of Leader of the Opposition, given the Congress’ numbers in the Lok Sabha.
This truculence on the part of the government has been compounded by the Congress’ own inability to make its presence felt to the desired degree in the Lower House, unlike in the Rajya Sabha where it has many more MPs than the BJP.
But even outside Parliament, the BJP has conveyed the impression that it is going to carry out a campaign against Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul, as can be seen in the so-called National Herald case, that is before the courts.
On Wednesday, Mr Gandhi may not have needed to go into the well of the House along with others protesting against the Speaker’s decision to not allow an adjournment motion debate on the deteriorating communal situation if he had by now built a reputation as a debater of substance on major issues. His reasoned intervention from his own seat would have sufficed to make the point.
Mr Gandhi still has the opportunity to make an important contribution when a discussion takes place on the attempt to polarise politics on communal lines and the seeming intolerance toward minorities by Hindutva votaries, and this is best done in a measured style.
The Congress leader seems to have some basis for suggesting there is a sense even among BJP MPs that discussion in Parliament is discouraged by the government, but Mr Gandhi would do well not to criticise the Speaker even while speaking outside Parliament.
