A combative Congress has decided to block all business in the Rajya Sabha in the three remaining days of the budget session, unless the government sacks Union Surface Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, whose family-linked Purti group has been named in a Comptroller and Auditor General report as beneficiary of a series of dodgy loans. Indication of this came on Friday itself when proceedings in the Upper House were punctuated by repeated adjournments after slogan-shouting Congress members, demanding his resignation, trooped into the well.
In the Lok Sabha, the Congress is likely to block proceedings on the Land Acquisition Bill – that has been listed for Monday – as well as demand an apology from the government for describing Rahul Gandhi’s accusations on food parks as “the politics of deception.”
As things stand, the government has no expectations of getting its controversial amendments to the 2013 Land Acquisition Act through Parliament: it hopes to get it through the Lok Sabha and then bring it to the Rajya Sabha, get it rejected, so that it can make a case for a joint sitting of the two Houses to pass it. But all this is contingent on the Houses being in order: if the Congress stays the course on the Mr. Gadkari issue, even this will not be possible.
The key Constitutional Amendment Bill to roll out a Goods and Services Tax is also unlikely to get past the Rajya Sabha. Two notices have already been moved to send it to a Select Committee, one jointly by the Congress, the CPI, the BSP, the Samajwadi Party and the DMK, and the other by the AIADMK.
