The Congress abstained from voting on Wednesday when the Lok Sabha cleared the long-pending Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill that it had originally brought to Parliament when it was in power. The Bill seeks to raise the FDI cap to 49 per cent.
The Modi government that was depending on the Congress to help it clear the controversial Insurance Bill in the Rajya Sabha will now have to rethink its strategy, as without the Congress’s 67 MPs it will not be able to get the law through.
A senior Congress Lok Sabha member later said the party had abstained as it felt it could not oppose its own Bill while it wished to maintain opposition solidarity — it even supported a CPI(M)-sponsored amendment to the Bill on Wednesday.
Clearly, the Congress is heading to either abstention or opposition to the Bill in the Rajya Sabha. Party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi, stressing at the official briefing that his party had not done a U-turn, said the party was opposing the Bill because the government had adopted the ordinance route, and the Bill that it (NDA govt) had brought to the House had changed the recommendations of the Select Committee. And another senior Congress Rajya Sabha member told The Hindu on Wednesday that the arrogance of the government had helped forge “opposition unity” and his party was in no mood to break it.
If the Congress opposes the Insurance Bill in the Upper House, it is set for certain defeat; if it abstains, the government will still fall short, unless it is able to breach some of the other parties such as the Samajwadi Party or Bahujan Samaj Party. However, given the Congress’s current mood, it looks most likely that the party will oppose the Bill in the Upper House.
In his speech, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said the BJP had introduced about “100 unnecessary amendments” and “repackaged” it as the NDA’s Insurance Bill.
“They want to permit Foreign Institutional Investments besides increasing the FDI limit. This combination is troubling. The Foreign Institutional Investment remains an extremely volatile, speculative form of foreign investment. Portfolio investments can be liquidated at very short notice and repatriated immediately,” he stressed.
Justifying the decision to raise the cap from 26 to 49 per cent, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha, who piloted the Bill, said the country needs this as “our insurance penetration is low”.
