The UPA had a fairly large majority over other parties, in its victory before forming the 15 Lok Sabha but the same cannot be said later on. This 15th term can be considered amongst the worst disrupted Lok Sabha ever in the history of Indian Government since the first general elections which were held in 1952.
Over the past two weeks we have observed a hiatus and adjournment of the monsoon session of the parliament every day. Not a single session went on to the end with the BJP demanding nothing less than a resignation of the PM on the issue of the coal blocks allocation scam. It alleged, based on the CAG report, that the government had an undue benefit of Rs. 1.86 lakh crore.
The logjam in the Parliament sessions had no ceased even today, it it remained adjourned till 12 noon. Though there were nuances that the BJP government would yield, the BJP leaders ensured that it was only a false illusion and a misunderstanding that they would relent on the issue of the resignation of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Sushma Swaraj said, "If you agree to both these demands (cancel allocations and order probe), then we can start the discussion and Parliament can function" clearing doubts about the misinterpretation of her telephonic conversation with the Congress supremo Sonia Gandhi, that they would cease to demand the resignation of PM.
According to the data from PRS, a research body studying the occurrences at the Parliament, showed that the present term of the Lok Sabha was the worst affected ever in Indian history. The worst part is that the term has two more years to go, and the loss that could be incurred is only imaginable.
According to the stats there was a loss of at least 27% of working hours due to disruptions. This fgured indicate a performance worse than 2004-09 or 1999-2004 of the NDA regime.
According to the expenditure as mentioned by the Lok Sabha secretariat in 2008 November, each minute of the parliamentary proceedings cost around Rs 29,000.
This monsoon session, which is soon going to end with no significant progress, Lok Sabha had been in session for 23 hours of the 60 scheduled hours while in Rajya Sabha it was 25 of 50 hours. This indicates a 62 hour loss to the progress in both the houses already. The expenditure for the sessions has already reached mythical proportions for the sessions till Friday.
In the earlier winter session of 2010, the 2G spectrum had carked and washed out the entire sessions. The following sessions were are daunted and blemished by the issues like Commonwealth Games, lokpal, price rise and Telangana statehood resulting in complete disruptions.
The current impasse however cannot be blamed only on the BJP, for causing the disruptions of the sessions while demanding for the PM's resignation or the Congress, for rejecting the probe to be conducted. There were several gaps in the dialogue between both the parties which were significant enough to cause losses.
(AW- Anil)
