The government may face rough weather on issue of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail trade in the Rajya Sabha, when a statutory motion on the matter is taken up for voting in the ongoing session.
The motion seeking to amend the FEMA notification which permits FDI in multi-brand retail has been accepted by Chairman Hamid Ansari. “If all those [parties] who joined us on the streets to protest the allowing of FDI in multi-brand retail trade vote with us in the Upper House, then the government is in a minority,” leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in the Rajya Sabha, Sitaram Yechury, told journalists here on Tuesday.
Mr. Yechury, who moved the motion, said it was part of the agenda for the ongoing session and it “has to be disposed of by the end of this session [and] voting has to happen.”
Mr. Yechury said the government had not spoken to the Left parties on the pending bills to open up the pension and insurance sectors to FDI, alleging that there had been talks between leaders of the Congress and the main Opposition BJP on these issues. He also claimed that the two parties had “come to some sort of understanding” to allow these controversial measures to be enacted.
Pointing out that the government wanted the Food Security and Land Acquisition bills to be adopted in this session itself, Mr. Yechury said: “It seems the government is in a hurry to prepare for elections. There is a lot of speculation that this is the last session.”
“But it [government] has made a lot of promises. If it wants to give effect to these measures and fulfil promises like creating a separate Telangana, they will require another session to pass the bill,” he said.
