An adjournment motion debate in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, technically on matters relating to the IPL but in effect on “Lalitgate” — the expression that seeks to encompass the links of senior BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Vasundhara Raje with former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi, who has been accused of money-laundering and has deposited himself in London — descended literally into personalised abuse between Ms Swaraj, the external affairs minister, and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, with the external affairs minister drawing satisfaction from angrily naming Mr Gandhi’s parents — the late Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia — in the context of corruption. A seasoned parliamentarian, the minister had the better of her rival as far as debating prowess goes, and her effort was supplemented by BJP’s other star performer, finance minister Arun Jaitley. But the story was one of hurling vile jibes, not reasoned debate.
There seemed little in Ms Swaraj’s intervention which had relevance to the subject at hand which has caused uproar and disruption right through the Monsoon Session of Parliament — that of the external affairs minister’s irregular assistance to a wanted man. An adjournment motion discussion is supposed to be narrow-focused on a specific issue. But the Congress’ opponents brought in Quattrocchi and other allegations from the past. And on the last day of the Monsoon Session on Thursday, the NDA took out a march against the Congress, the main Opposition party whose parliamentary numbers were pathetically reduced in last year’s Lok Sabha election, for obstructing its efforts to push the reforms agenda.
The absurdity of this can’t be lost on many. The BJP was, in effect, trying to blame the principal Opposition party for not being able to pass the GST Bill, on which the industrial sector had set its heart after the government had utterly failed in its effort to get the land acquisition bill through. In the latter case, almost all non-BJP parties were opposed, including BJP’s NDA allies, as were farmers across the country. But on GST, the government chose to fix the blame on the Congress exclusively and succeeded somewhat in dividing the Opposition in order to isolate the Congress. This won’t impress the proponents of second-generation economic reforms, who are unlikely to regard the Narendra Modi government with indulgence for long at this rate. Instead of playing politics right to deliver on promises made, the Prime Minister has been reduced to blaming the Opposition — exactly what his predecessor had ended up doing.
