THE WEEK IN PARLIAMENT

 Subhas Ray

WITH the railway minister Laloo Prasad Yadav announcing a fresh probe into the Godhra carnage on the floor of the Lok Sabha on July 14, both the Houses of Parliament were thrown into turmoil with angry BJP members leading the disruption. After repeated attempts to pacify the members and appeals to let the business of the Houses continue, the presiding officers had no option but to adjourn the Houses for the day.

The railway minister made the announcement during his reply to the discussion on railway budget. He said the government would conduct a fresh inquiry into the Godhra incident in the light of forensic evidence. The opposition, which is already giving clear indications that it is unable to digest the decisive defeat handed over by the people, went bersek with this announcement. They also continued their boycott of the railway minister in the House on the issue of ‘tainted ministers’.

On July 15, BJP member, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, threatened in Lok Sabha that if a fresh probe began on Godhra carnage issue there would be a spate of incidents of riots in the country.

STRIP SEARCH      

On July 14 in Lok Sabha, CPI(M) member, Lakshman Seth, raised the issue of the then defence minister, George Fernandes, being strip searched in a US airport. He termed the episode as a most humiliating one in independent India’s history. Even an enemy country would not mete out such a treatment to another country’s defence minister, felt Lakshman Seth. This humiliation by a rouge country was kept a secret by the then BJP-led NDA government because they had fear of getting exposed for their act of cowardice. It had no minimum courage to protest against the US. As retaliation, they could have ordered the US to pack up the FBI office from Delhi. All in all this episode ripped apart the cloak of “nationalism” worn by the BJP. The CPI(M) member insisted the Congress-led UPA government to condemn this incident. Many members associated with the issue raised by Lakshman Seth.

REMOVAL OF GOVERNORS

The Lok Sabha held a short duration discussion regarding removal of governors of four states on the basis of their ideology. The CPI(M) member, Md Salim, lashed out at the BJP for raising a ruckus on this issue. He asked the BJP, which started talking about Sarkaria Commission, to see what exactly the Commission had said and what the BJP implemented while in office. The Sarkaria Commission had stated: “The governor should be an eminent person in some walk of life; he should be a person from outside the state; he should be a detached figure….” Salim clarified the meaning of ‘detached’ by quoting from the recommendation of the Commission “..and not too intimately connected with local politics of the state and he should be one who has not taken too great a part in politics in general and particularly in the recent past.” The BJP after coming to power in 1998, not only disregarded these recommendations but did exactly the opposite by appointing hardcore RSS persons as governors. And the BJP leaders openly questioned about the appointment of non-BJP governors by the earlier governments. There were even demands for their transfer, removal etc. The BJP would do well to sometimes stand before the mirror, advised Salim. He reminded the house it was during the the V P Singh government that an inter-state council was formed.

Referring to Advani’s speech while moving the motion, Salim said Advani emphasised only on the ‘removal’ aspect but not on the ideology because he was fully aware that the people have rejected the ideology of Sangh Parivar. This matter is not limited to the appointment of governors. The people’s mandate was to remove them from power. Salim made it clear that the politics of Sangh Parivar will not be tolerated.

He then referred to blatant misuse of office by the RSS governors, particularly in Gujarat. Another glaring example was Babu Parmanand, the then governor of Haryana, publicly seeking votes for Vajpayee. “As a governor how could he do this? It is ridiculous the BJP was now giving a lecture about the role of governors”, said Salim. This is the background in which these RSS appointees had to be removed. The conduct of governors is being discussed here. In West Bengal we have a governor who was a vice-president of BJP. We have no objection as long as he maintains norms and provisions of the Constitution. We have objection for those who do not believe in democracy, do not intend to pursue the democratic process, do not have faith in secularism and do not want to comply with the provisions of the Constitution and who want to deviate from the well established convention.

ON GENERAL BUDGET

After the conclusion of discussion on railway budget, the discussion on the general budget 2004-05 began on July 14 in Lok Sabha. Participating in the discussion, the CPI(M) member, Rupchand Pal, congratulated the government for addressing the rural issues – the issues of rural employment, rural poverty and the empowerment of the underprivileged. However, he strongly criticised the raising of the limit in the case of foreign direct investment in insurance, telecom and civil aviation sectors. At the outset itself he made it clear that the verdict of the people was both against communalism and neo-liberal policies pursued by the Vajpayee government. He reminded the House how the poster boys of economic reforms, Chandrababu Naidu, Digvijay Singh, S M Krishna and A K Antony were all routed in the recent elections. The supporter of NDA’s anti-people policies, Trinamool Congress, has been reduced to just one seat in the Lok Sabha. He asked the government to keep this in mind while formulating policies.

Stressing that employment generation, particularly in rural areas, is vital to the welfare of the Indian masses, Rupchand Pal asked the government to implement what has been promised in the CMP. Welcoming the two per cent education cess across the board, he wanted the government to use the resources thus raised for the specific purpose. He cited the earlier experiences when such cess amounts were put into the central kitty and hardly used for the purpose for which the cess was levied. He warned that the service tax may cause some inflationary pressure. He expressed dissatisfaction at the meagre amounts allocated to ICDS, given the scheme’s importance. Same is the case with health, he said. Rupchand Pal raised the issue of black money (virtually a parallel economy) and tax dues (a whopping Rs 1,03,300 crore). He wanted the government to concentrate on plugging tax evasion. Reminding the government of the commitment in the CMP to unearth black money, Pal asked the government to take steps in this regard. Only by this will the government be in a position to allocate funds to meet the commitments in the CMP, he felt. As regards the raising of excise duties on steel and import liberalisation, Pal felt it would be disastrous to the domestic steel sector.

Pal urged upon the government to provide adequate support to the small scale industry (SSI), which is the most labour intensive sector and provides largest number of employment. It also has export potential. He criticised the proposal for de-reservation of a number of items earlier reserved for SSI. He felt that the government cannot address the issue of job creation if it neglects the manufacturing sector. He said Value Added Tax (VAT) was a welcome measure but there were problems regard this in many countries.

Appreciating the measures taken by this government by bringing down the interest rate from 10.5 per cent to 9 per cent on the loans taken by the states from the centre, Pal said the state governments were in great difficulties financially and that the centre must act to redress the situation.

Before the Railway Budget passed there was a discussion on Demands for Grants on Account (Railways) – 2004-05. Many CPI(M) members spoke and drew attention to the absence of railways projects, lines, double lines, bridges, over-bridges, safety, cleanliness, construction of level-crossing, introduction of various new trains, railways connectivity and extension, electrifications, provision of more funds and implementation of pending and ongoing projects in various areas in states and on various other issues. Among those who spoke included Sebastian Paul, Abdullah Kutty, P Satheedevi, C S Sujatha, K S Manoj, (all from Kerala); P Mohan and A V Bellarmin (from Tamil Nadu) and Minati Sen, Santasri Chatterjee, Alakesh Das, Rupchand Pal and Lakshman Seth (all from West Bengal). Unlike in the past, no cut-motions were moved by the CPI(M) members.

OTHER ISSUES

Khagen Das, CPI(M) Lok Sabha member from Tripura, drew the attention of the government regarding a serious financial problem being faced by the government of Tripura due to non-release of withheld portion of Non-Plan gap grant amounting to Rs 74.36 crore. He said the state government had not only fulfilled but also exceeded the target fixed under the MoU. He urged upon the union government to immediately release the gap grant.

Prasanta Chatterjee of CPI(M) in Rajya Sabha drew attention to the grim situation prevailing in Assam, Bihar and parts of West Bengal due to heavy floods. The government of West Bengal has taken steps in advance to tackle the problem. However, Chatterjee wanted the central government to get in touch with concerned state governments and chalk out an effective action plan to deal with the problem, both in the short term and long term.

Chandrakala Pandey of CPI(M) in Rajya Sabha strongly demanded a ban on multinational pharmaceutical companies using Indians as guinea-pigs for conducting clinical trials of their new drugs. Taking advantage of the poverty, illiteracy of these people, the MNCs were exposing them to great risks in terms of health even while paying paltry sums as compensation. She demanded the government to set up machineries to identify such companies and ban their clinical trials in the country. Manoj Bhattacharya of the RSP associated with this demand.

Sunil Khan of CPI(M) in Lok Sabha demanded the government to bring legislation to accord ‘Right to strike’ to all government employees. He recalled how the entire working class went on a successful strike through out the country on February 24 in defence of this right.  He also wanted the government to ratify the relevant ILO convention.