Opposition-govt hostility in Parliament signals deep divide, distrust

Just ahead of its scheduled suspension on August 21, the Parliament of India witnessed what would have seemed unimaginable at one time.

When Union Home Minister Amit Shah came to the Lok Sabha on August 20 to introduce the Constitution Amendment Bill enabling the sacking of PM, CM and ministers jailed for 30 straight days, a group of Opposition MPs trooped into the well of the House, with some physically blocking Shah's mic, others coming too close for the Ministers comfort, still others tearing copies of the Bill and flinging pieces into the air.

Congress MP from Amritsar Gurjit Singh Aujla was seen banging his hand against the raised wooden panel that houses the chair of Speaker Om Birla, while other MPs sloganeered from the well. At one point it seemed the Opposition and treasury bench members would come to blows with Ministers Kiren Rijiju, Ravneet Bittu, SPS Baghel and MP Anurag Thakur covering Shah to avert any scuffle.

The situation diffused only with the presiding officer adjourning the House proceedings. When the House resumed after an hour that day, Shah sat in the rear rows instead of the front having just been at the centre of the Opposition's ire.

In the Rajya Sabha, too, when he mentioned the same Bill on August 21, Shah faced pejorative slogans from the Opposition, which reminded him of his own arrest in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case. The Home Minister hit back saying he had resigned prior to arrest.

Merits and demerits of the Bills apart, unseemly developments that marked most part of the just-concluded Monsoon Session, signalled a deep and growing divide between the opposing camps.

Such was the distrust that the entire Congress-led Opposition INDIA bloc skipped the customary tea LS Speaker Om Birla hosts for floor leaders at the end of each session.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his Cabinet colleagues Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah and NDA partners came on Birla's invitation. But the picture was incomplete as Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav, Abhishek Banerjee and other Opposition stalwarts stayed away.

Old timers who have served several terms in either House of Parliament attributed the near irretrievable breakdown of dialogue between rival camps to the absence of bridge builders and consensus makers, who could engage opposing sides effortlessly and respectfully.

They spoke of the principal onus of running the House being on floor managers of the Government and their equations with the Opposition leaders.

That responsibility in the instant case would lie on the shoulders of Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju and his deputies Arjun Meghwal and L Murugan who say they tried engaging the Opposition throughout the session but to no avail.

Disruptions persisted throughout with both Houses working for barely 37 of the 120 hours of work available.

The impasse centred on the denial of the Opposition's demand to discuss the Bihar electoral revision in the House - an agenda the government declined saying it can't be taken up because a Union Minister can't respond to actions which an independent constitutional body like the Election Commission undertakes.

With the meeting ground elusive, parliamentarians harked back to the times of when rivals were not seen as adversaries.

Under BJP's Atal Behari Vajpayee, a Prime Minister rooted in the RSS but equally in Gandhian socialism, the Government and the Opposition had a working relationship. In fact when he passed away on August 16, 2018, then Congress President Sonia Gandhi described Vajpayee as “a warm personality with a gift of friendship that won admirers from across the political spectrum.”

Long-serving MPs also swear by the bridge-building abilities of BJP's Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, who were leaders of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha, and of Congress veterans Pranab Mukherjee and Ghulam Nabi Azad, who commanded a considerable clout across the political aisle when in Government.

There was never a time when the two sides found it hard to even share a cup of tea, said a five-term MP.

Politicians across parties also speak of how Jaitley as Finance Minister in 2017 forged a consensus around the controversial Goods and Services Tax, the single most defining economic reform of the Modi era.

GST, in cold storage for 17 years until, would not have been possible without Jaitley, say many MPs citing the late FM's persuasive manner with the larger opposition.

Many parliamentarians, old and new, feel today's polity is increasingly getting shorn of leaders who can resolve conflicts.

For instance, even the consensus reached in the meetings of the Business Advisory Committees (BAC) of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha - meant to finalise weekly agendas in Parliament - is easily being broken these days.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju says the BAC of the Lok Sabha had discussed the Government's legislative agenda - the Constitution (130th Amendment) Bill - 2025 and the Opposition had promised they would resist the Bills from their seats "but not enter the well of the House.”

The reverse happened. While government ministers claim that leaders representing the Opposition in the BAC meetings do not appear to carry weight with their high commands who prevail on House strategies, the Opposition flings the argument right back at the government.

Gaurav Gogoi, deputy leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, says the ruling dispensation stubbornly refused a debate on the Bihar voter rolls revision, the single dominant request of the joint opposition throughout the Monsoon Session.

It was against this backdrop of acute disagreements that the opposition, already seething from days of denial of a discussion on Bihar's Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls by the Election Commission, viewed the government's latest Bill on sacking jailed ministers as another provocation and resisted the move in both Houses. By the time the Monsoon Session ended, much of its sittings had been washed out with "Operation Sindoor" being the only meaningful debate the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha witnessed.

Both Houses passed 15 Bills, but parliamentary debate on those Bills was missing with the wider opposition on protest over the denial of SIR discussion.

Speaker Om Birla is said to have called the leaders of all parties and even dialled them personally to break the stalemate.