Speechless in lok sabha

NEW DELHI: The Opposition on Tuesday raised serious questions about the impartiality of Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee. In an unprecedented step, the Opposition stayed away from the House all through the day’s proceedings, with former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee asserting that the NDA was “deeply disappointed” over the manner in which the House was being currently run.

“I may add that confidence in one’s fairness and objectivity has to be commanded, it cannot be demanded,” Mr Vajapyee added. His remarks, part of a reply to a letter written earlier in the day by the Speaker, is said to have left the latter sulking. In coversations with his Left colleagues, Mr Chatterjee is learnt to have offered to step down from his post, but has been persuaded to stay on.

The NDA, however, is determined to carry on its campaign against the Speaker’s conduct. The latter’s decision to suspend the Question Hour for some 20 minutes to allow members of the treasury benches and the Left-Samajwadi party combine to launch an anti-NDA diatribe only added to the simmering tension between the two sides.

Mr Vajpayee, while formulating his response to the Speaker’s letter urging the former PM to use his good offices to persuade the NDA to call off their protest and return to the House in the interests of “parliamentary democracy”, was constrained to factor in the setiments expressed by his party colleagues during a meeting of the BJP parliamentary party meeting here on Tuesday morning.

Mr Vajpayee had just minutes earlier read out the letter written to him by the Speaker. It triggered all-round protests during the meeting, with BJP members complaining vociferously about the Speaker’s “brazenly partisan” attitude, which was held as one of the factors responsible for the bad vibes between the ruling benches and the Opposition. “Rather than staying neutral, Mr Chatterjee, more often than not, becomes a party,” lamented a BJP parliamentarian.

“Everyone agreed that the Opposition’s contribution to Parliament’s proceedings was crucial,” Mr Vajpayee wrote in the letter addressed to the Lok Sabha Speaker, “But there was also unanimity that a legislature’s proceedings can be smooth and constructive only if the presiding officer is able to inspire as much confidence in the Opposition as he is able to do in the ruling parties. The stark reality is that this situation is totally absent in our House.”

The ruling coalition, not surprisingly, rallied behind the Speaker. A meeting of all non-NDA parties has been convened by the Congress on Thursday morning to discuss the Opposition’s attitude towards Mr Chatterjee. The party, which was severely critical of the former prime minister’s reply to the Speaker’s letter as well as the NDA’s move of boycotting the Lower House for a day, said that efforts were on to “negotiate” with the BJP as well.

Slamming the NDA’s protest, parliamentary affairs minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi said that in the history of the Indian Parliament this would go down as a very sad day, as never before had any party boycotted the Lok Sabha and the office of the Speaker. Mr Dasmunsi dubbed Mr Vajpayee’s observations “as totally baseless and concocted allegation”, and called his comments “unfortunate, uncalled for and unwarranted”.