The Bharatiya Janata Party has begun to consider options on how to sidestep Parliament and yet run the government, as Opposition solidarity continued to hamper the functioning of the two Houses on Wednesday.
One option that the government is toying with is to fashion difficult pieces of legislation as money Bills to pass the Rajya Sabha hurdle.
A money Bill once passed by the Lok Sabha, is automatically passed by Parliament if it has been in the Rajya Sabha for a fortnight. This would, therefore, suit the Modi government as it lacks the numbers in the Upper House to get key Bills through without support from the Opposition.
On Wednesday, in off-the-record conversations, top BJP sources expanded on employing the money Bill route to pass key laws that it felt are necessary for the government to fulfil its own agenda.
This talk rekindled apprehensions amongst those who sit across the aisle that the government may resort to unconstitutional methods to get difficult Bills through Parliament: indeed, it is a fear that Opposition MPs have been articulating since the Budget session earlier this year, when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had inserted other laws into the budget.
On Wednesday, top Congress sources, responding to the loud thinking by the BJP, said they were not at all surprised as they recalled the budget session, when Opposition MPs had accused the government of subverting parliamentary procedures.
On May 12, CPI(M) member K.N. Balagopal had flagged the issue in a letter to Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari, warning that “if the wrong tendency to bypass the Council of States for passing important legislation through the ‘nomenclature’ of money Bill is not checked legally, it will affect the very basic structure of our Constitution and values.”
On May 13, the issue was also raised in the Upper House when the government had placed the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Bill, 2015, in the House just hours before the close of the budget session.
With the government insisting that it was a money Bill and citing the Speaker’s ruling to this effect, the Bill sailed through the Rajya Sabha despite the reservations of Opposition MPs who had warned that a bad precedent was being set, which would, in turn, undermine the importance of the Upper House.
The Chair at that time ruled that the decision on what constitutes a money Bill is the exclusive domain of the Lok Sabha Speaker, but Opposition members in the Upper House had said this should be specifically defined. They had urged the Chair to communicate on their behalf to the Speaker that she should define the criteria for a money Bill.
This also comes close on the heels of Congress leaders responding to the suspension of 25 of its MPs on Monday as echoing the manner in which the Gujarat Assembly had functioned while Narendra Modi was Chief Minister. Former Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Gujarat Assembly, Shaktisinh Gohil, told The Hindu that the suspension of members came as no surprise. “It had become the norm during his years as Chief Minister to suspend Opposition members every session.”
