Lok Sabha disrupted for third day, unease in Congress over continued disruptions

WHILE THE Lok Sabha couldn’t transact any enterprise for the third straight day on Thursday with protesting opposition MPs remaining agency on their demand for a separate dialogue on the farmers’ agitation, there have been voices inside the Congress which really feel the standoff was pointless and the Lok Sabha may have adopted the Rajya Sabha template.
In the Rajya Sabha, the Opposition — after disrupting the House on Tuesday — got here up with a peace components. It requested the federal government to extend the time allotted for the talk on the movement of because of the President’s Address in order that members can communicate on the farmers’ difficulty too, a proposal which the federal government readily agreed. The debate, which was to final for 10 hours, was elevated to fifteen hours after which the talk started on Wednesday.
“We wasted three days unnecessarily. We could have followed the Rajya Sabha model. A combined debate also has the advantage of the Prime Minister replying. A discussion under any other rule will be replied to by a minister. Disruption actually never helps the Opposition. We could have raised our points more effectively in a discussion. Now if we agree, it will send a wrong signal,” a Congress MP from a north Indian state advised The Indian Express.
But the Congress management is in a repair. “The same parties which had agreed to the extended debate in the Rajya Sabha are insisting that in the Lok Sabha the government should allow a separate discussion immediately after the motion of thanks debate. The government says it wants to take up the discussion on the Budget after the debate on the President’s Address,” one other Congress MP stated.
Leaders of the Opposition events met through the day to strategise. Senior Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and Congress’s chief within the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury attended the assembly and others current had been DMK’s T R Baalu, AIUDF’s Badruddin Ajmal, AAP’s Bhagwant Mann and leaders of the Shiv Sena, CPM and the CPI. “It is members from Kerala and Tamil Nadu who are more aggressive because they have Assembly elections coming up. Our leaders are also not thinking through,” one other Congress MP stated.

“At the end of the day… there were only some 18 or 19 Opposition members in the Well. The government is citing the case of the Rajya Sabha. It has got an excuse to deny a separate debate. It is not that we cannot talk about the farmers’ issue in the President’s Address debate. Even if there is a separate debate… is it possible that members will not refer to the farmers’ agitation,” one member stated.
One Opposition member, nevertheless, stated the stance in each the Houses ought to have been the identical. “They (the parties in Rajya Sabha) committed a blunder,” he stated.