Liberhan floor effect

The timing of the Liberhan Commission revelation has had a telling floor effect. The first two days of Parliament session saw vociferous opposition, united from the Left to the Right on the sugarcane farmers’ plight. The government was finding this ‘unity’ tricky given its lack of numbers in the Rajya Sabha.

No sooner had some opposition players started reminiscing about how a combined opposition had cornered the Rajiv Gandhi regime than the Liberhan report emerged from the locker.

So, every opposition party demanded that the government table the full report, but nobody, except Shiv Sena, would join the BJP members — whose leaders have been reportedly indicted by Liberhan panel to storm the well of the House.

Not just Mulayam and the leftists, even NDA’s own JD(U) MPs looked the other way when BJP camp prompted them for a combined ‘well show’. The road from total unity to ‘splendid isolation’ can be a very short one in the twists and turns of politics.