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The report could ruffle budget session

Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI: The demand for early tabling of the Liberhan Commission report, voiced on Wednesday by leaders of several political parties at a meeting called by Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, is so far the only indication of any hot political issue ruffling the seriousness of the delayed budget session scheduled to begin on Thursday.

The second session of the 15th Lok Sabha is expected to see the passing of the first budget of the new government. As earlier indicated by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, the government would like to see this passed before the end of the month, preferably a few days earlier, as the vote-on-account adopted by Parliament before the Lok Sabha election allows the government to draw money from the consolidated fund of India only till July 31.

The first few days have a heavy economic agenda: the Economic Survey will be tabled on July 2, the Railway budget is to be presented on July 3 and the Union budget on July 6, after the weekend.

Before the end of the month the Railway budget will be discussed and passed, the general budget will be debated and, possibly, the budget of a few Ministries will be discussed in detail before the rest are guillotined and the Finance Bill adopted. The Lok Sabha has less then four weeks to do this.

Party leaders on Wednesday made the routine promise to the Speaker that they will cooperate in the smooth functioning of Parliament. The main Opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has also realised that its obstructionist tactics in the previous Lok Sabha did not pay off at the hustings and its leaders are now talking about playing the role of a “constructive Opposition.”

But, some issues have been flagged by the BJP — the disclosure by a judge that a Union Minister had tried to influence him on a case, the slapping of a bank manager by a Congress MP from Andhra Pradesh, and, of course, the Liberhan Commission report.

Perhaps some political parties are sensing that the government may not table this report in this session — it has six months to table the report along with an action taken report and may well decide to do this in the winter session of Parliament.

With this in mind, Gurudas Dasgupta (Communist Party of India), Basudev Acharia (Communist Party of India – Marxist) and Lalu Prasad (Rashtriya Janata Dal) demanded that the report be tabled immediately along with a report on action taken. The BJP leaders were a bit more circumspect. “Why should we raise the Liberhan issue,” one senior leader said while adding that the issue was now 16 years old and would not give it or its leaders too much pain. “It is likely to cause more discomfort in the Samajwadi Party camp now that Mulayam Singh has embraced Kalyan Singh [who was the BJP Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh when the Babri Masjid was brought down], and it could also embarrass the Congress if Justice Liberhan has made any adverse comments on [former Prime Minister] Narasimha Rao.” This point was buttressed when Mr. Mulayam Singh on Wednesday suggested the government “exercise caution” in implementing the report.

If the monsoon does not pick up in the next few weeks, that could be another issue which some parties may like to debate. As for the government, it would be happy to see its budget get through smoothly for there may not be time for much else, although there is some talk of other important legislation also being brought to Parliament.

The exercise of allotting a fixed numbered seat to every MP has not yet been completed; the constitution of parliamentary committees is yet to be done; and it is not yet known which party will chair which parliamentary committee. For that, the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs will meet party leaders during the course of the session.

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