Q for Quiet, Qualm, Queered, Questions

NEW DELHI: The uproar over the Manmohan Singh government’s bid to suppress information about Quattrocchi’s arrest in Argentina threatened to consume the presentation of the rail budget in the Lok Sabha on Monday afternoon, with a belligerent opposition using its lung-power to prevent railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav from going ahead with the ritual and bringing Congress president Sonia Gandhi in its direct line of fire.

With news of Quattrocchi being released by the Argentine authorities trickling in by this evening, the Opposition had got another weapon to corner the government. Its charge that the ruling combine had deliberately slept over the news of his arrest and wasted precious time is likely to get a fillip.

In an attempt to keep up the heat on the ruling combine, the BJP had, earlier in the day, accused the Congress of placing its own interests, and that of its president, above that of the country. “It is attempting to yet again hide truth from the country and its citizens. Such a conduct is deceitful, dishonest and gravely damaging of our national interests.

Yet again, the Congress is placing its own, and its party president’s interests, above that of truth, probity, accountability in public life and integrity in office of responsibility,’’ a joint statement issued by Mr L K Advani and Mr Jaswant Singh stated.

The Leaders of the Opposition in the two Houses of Parliament trashed the arguments put forth by the government managers on the reasons for the delay in releasing information about Quattrocchi’s arrest and its feeble response.

“The government avers that there is no extradition treaty with Argentina. Not correct. There is an extradition treaty with the South American nation,’’ the two BJP leaders asserted.

“Again, the claim put out by the government agencies that they were pre-occupied with translations for all of 17 days is also misleading. All communications from our missions are always in English. This is a dishonest plea,’’ they said, adding, “Besides, if there was any direct Interpol message to the CBI in Spanish, it would need no more than an hour to translate its contents.’’

The two BJP stalwarts also wondered why had the Supreme Court been kept in the dark about Quattrocchi’s confinement when a related matter came up for hearing on February 12. ``Why did the CBI counsel keep asserting that nothing has remained in the case ?’’ Mr Advani and Mr Singh asked.

The BJP and its allies mounted an aggressive attack in Parliament right from the beginning of the day’s proceedings. The Lok Sabha, in fact, was witness to an unusual spectacle.

While Mr Yadav tried to press ahead with the presentation of the rail budget, the BJP and its allies sought to drown his speech with a sustained display of slogan-shouting, all of them targeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her association with the Italian middleman.

With the Opposition unrelenting, the voluble Mr Yadav was forced to raise his decibel level to get his message across to the Lok Sabha, and the rest of the nation. He also tried to rush through with his speech, and had to, in the process, skip portions of the 38-page document, rambling his way through the din.

All this while, the NDA members kept up with their attack, bringing Ms Gandhi, who was present in the House, in its line of fire. For a change, the Samajwadi Party and its allies such as the TDP and the AGP extended full backing to the NDA gameplan, even the SP decided to stage a walk-out from the House after making its point on the issue during the rail-budget presentation.

With the government clearly on the defensive, the NDA had, at a meeting held here this morning, decided to serve notices for the suspension of the Question Hour so as to enable it to pile up pressure on the government to come clean on the issue. They also decided that they would not allow the railway minister to read out his speech.

They conveyed this information to Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, Leader of the House Pranab Mukherjee and parliamentary affairs minister P R Dasmunsi at a meeting held in the Speaker’s chamber after the disruption of the Question Hour.

Their demand that the railway minister be asked to lay the budget document on the table was, not surprisingly, rejected by the government managers.