Is The Government Feeling the Pressure of Opposition?

NEW DELHI: The government, through its direct confrontationist approach against opposition within and outside Parliament, now finds itself virtually isolated on all issues including the terror attack in Gurdaspur even as it moves into National Security Advisor level talks with Pakistan.

Scribes covering Parliament were surprised to find a normally sanguine Union Minister, known for holding regular media darbars, ranting and raving against a newspaper for a headline that he saw as being supportive of Yakub Memon, just a day after the latter’s execution. The Minister, clearly feeling the pressure of widespread condemnation of the execution, insisted that it was just a “group of 40 leftists” who kept issuing and signing statements, in a reference to the petition to the President against the death sentence that was, incidentally, signed by BJP members Shatrughan Sinha and Ram Jethmalani as well as former judges certainly not known for their Left affiliation.

This came even as Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh making a statement on the Gurdaspur terror attack in the Lok Sabha, broke the peace, with a remark against the Congress for the alleged use of the term “Hindu terror.” As Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge pointed out in the House, that the entire opposition was listening silently to the statement as part of the consensus against the attack, when Singh disrupted this by his “rampaging remarks” against the Congress party. The ensuing uproar again brought out what have become the almost irreconcilable differences between the treasury benches and the opposition, with the two weeks of the monsoon session of Parliament passing without any business being transacted.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reluctance to attend Parliament’s business advisory meetings has led to other parties, more so the Congress party in whittling down its own seniority of participation. These meetings usually helped break the logjam in the past between the two sides, but are clearly not working any longer. As the Congress leader said, ‘it is all about scoring points, and usually it is for the government to lower the pitch and reach out for consensus.” According to the opposition leaders the BJP in Parliament is not doing this, and instead targeting the Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi “unnecessarily” by name.

The government, despite the Gurdaspur attack, is so far on track insofar as the NSA level talks with Pakistan are concerned. Support for this crucial dialogue is not likely from the Opposition, with the Home Minister now attacking the Congress party for being soft on terror. Singh claimed in Parliament that the Congress government had been praised by LeT mentor Hafiz Sayeed for its stand on terrorism, a statement that has further fuelled the row. The Congress has urged the government to raise the issue of terrorism with Pakistan in no uncertain terms, making it clear that it will be watching the progress of this dialogue with a hawks eye.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has accused the Congress of blocking the Home Ministers statement on the Gurdaspur attack, and making national security a divisive issue. "At least they should have spoken in one voice on an issue like national security. We expect the Congress will once again review its negative and irresponsible behaviour," he said.

Congress leader Anand Sharma retorted, "The House has spoken in one voice in condemning terrorism and the terrorist attack in Gurdaspur... It would have been advisable to have a consensus on a discussion." Other regional parties too have blamed the government for blocking a consensus on issues in Parliament. BJD's Tathagata Satpathy said the government was abdicating its responsibility.CPI(M)’s P Karunakaran said it was for the government to address the issues raised by the Opposition. NCP's Tariq Anwar slammed the government for not initiating any dialogue with the Opposition to address the issues raised by it.