In his eagerness to deride the United Progressive Alliance government any which way he could, BJP leader L.K. Advani appears to have been searching the lexicon for new terms and expressions. But “illegitimate” was the wrong word to use for a government legitimately elected by the people. That said, there was really no reason for the Congress Members of Parliament, on cue from party president Sonia Gandhi, to react the way they did in the Lok Sabha. Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde chose this occasion to make his first intervention as Leader of the House. Other Congress MPs were on their feet in protest and Speaker Meira Kumar forced Mr. Advani to withdraw the remark almost under the threat of expunction. The BJP stalwart, sensing he had gone a word too far, tried to make amends by admitting he had made a mistake, and clarifying that what he had in mind was not UPA-II (elected in 2009), but UPA-I after the 2008 vote of confidence, which, according to him, was won by the government only because it spent crores of rupees. In a foretaste of the political battles which lie ahead as the country moves slowly towards the next cycle of State elections and then 2014 itself, the Congress sensed an opportunity and pressed ahead with its advantage. In the House, Ms Gandhi was politically shrewd to recognise that Mr. Advani had made an intemperate remark, while outside Parliament, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, with more than a touch of hyperbole, described the remark as “disgraceful and unfortunate.”
If the Congress was overly aggressive, was the BJP leader overly defensive? Or has the veteran fighter of four decades lost his political touch? A few days ago, he annoyed several leaders on his side of the divide by blogging about the dim prospects of the next Prime Minister being from the BJP. In the dock on Wednesday for using the “i” word, Mr. Advani found himself without ammunition. All the adverse moral connotations of “illegitimate” must have been playing on the BJP leader’s mind when he sought to clarify his remark. Besides, for Mr. Advani, the 2009 loss, when he was the prime ministerial candidate of the NDA, must have hurt a lot more than the loss in 2004, when the NDA faced the election under A.B. Vajpayee. Whether this clouded his mind while speaking in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday is difficult to say, but, with his subsequent clarification, the noise over this needless controversy should be laid to rest. Nothing would be farther from the truth than to say that Mr. Advani was questioning the legitimacy of a democratically held, constitutionally validated, general election. Surely, the Congress and the BJP have more serious issues to tackle in Parliament and outside.
Keywords: Assam violence, L.K. Advani remark, Sonia Gandhi reaction, Congress, UPA government, BJP
Whatever strength the BJP has today is due in no small measure to the foundations laid by Vajpayee and Advani who had lifted the party up from a mere two in 1984. An active Advani is still around ready to play his role in the party and the country. But in their personal greed to be PM the junior BJP leaders are not prepared to concede Advani his due as though the party will win hands down if somebody like Modi is bandied about for PM.Every leader of some consequence is PM candidate in the BJP which is in total contrast to what is obtaining in the Congress where all the senior leaders and the rest root for Rahul thus presenting a united approach before the voters. The BJP is very much like its former avatar as Janata party of 1977.
In the Mahabharata war,Arjuna on surveying the 2 armies saw his own kith and kin arrayed on both sides and overwhelmed by grief at his having to kill his own men sought to retire from the war even before the first arrow was shot. Likewise, Advani even before the talks on coalition formation began envisioned dim prospects of the next Prime Minister being from BJP. Like Arjuna, has Advani who had seen fiercer battles developed cold feet or betrays his frustration at not standing any chance of being the PM candidate any more ?
During the 1971 elections to Tamilnadu Assembly Kamaraj was in Dharmapuri campaigning for his Congress(O) party and it was on the day when the elections to the 10 Madras city constituencies had just ended.Addressing an election meeting Kamaraj said that the Congress(O) had already bagged all the ten city seats and enthused the party workers in the light of the uniform write-ups in the papers predicting a Cong.(O) win.But the results proved total decimation of the Cong.(O)with the DMK romping home winning 184 seats out of 234.Though upset over the unexpected,Kamaraj gracefully accepted his party's defeat saying that the people had given their mandate to the DMK and he would wait and watch the DMK's performance for 6 months before criticizing it.He lived up to it.The massive electoral debacle did not drive him to lose balance and interpret the DMK win in any other way. Such tall leadership was there in those days !
Coming as it did from the usually reticent Sonia Gandhi, the reaction to Advani's remarks indeed appeared unusually sharp and to some extent even over the top. But as rightly pointed out in the editorial, both the parties have far more serious issues to tackle and it would not do the Congress any good to get worked up over such trivial issues which serve no other purpose but to divert attention from the government's failures.
Your editorial is a balanced view while hauling Mr advani over the coals
for the intemporate utterence u have correctly said that both congress
and BJP has better things to do than wasting time on a word
inadsvertently said.Mr Shinde alsocommitted a faux pas while refering to
Ms Jaya Bachan.Parliment should give more attention to serious business
of nation building than waste time on silly things
Was this write up really necessary by The Hindu? Again a case of much a do about nothing, because indian politics is reduced to sensationalism and not on substance.
Before every assembly session, Lok Sabha speaker convenes an all-party meeting to discuss how to conduct the sessions seamlessly but that is ostensible. The real reason behind the meeting is to figure ways on how to waste the time by indulging in petty exchange of arguments which have no relevance to crucial issues plaguing our country.
Then why should you write an editorial on this "noise over the needless controversy"? Do you say that Advani did not mean what he was saying?
It is a shame for the democracy to watch two major political parties about who meant what. Two wrongs never make a right and congress has rightly proved by by the hyperbole remarks made by the honourable Prime Minister.However it is a matter of concern for the genreal public like us to see that that the two major parties are busy fighting out their defferences in the monsoon session of the house when the whole of the country expected them to discuss the peril concerns of the nation like clashes between the two communities in Assam , rise inflation, poverty, corruption et al.
Recent times have witnessed that verbal slips turn costlier than the policy slips which elude the attention of Parliament. Andrew Carnegie has rightly said,"The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell". What he missed was the ill fate of the third one who is left with nothing. Soniaji got the oyster and Advaniji got the shell,only for the hapless voters to taste the sand at last. The ruling and the opposition dribble on trivialities,when the commoners gasp for a humble living and our Parliament even after its journey of 60 long years does not show the way.
The editorial, perfectly titled "Much ado about nothing"reflects the prevailing public opinion on the issue in question. Being one among the senior-most politicians and a very seasoned parliamentarian, Mr.Advani, more than anyone else, would have been the first person to realize the inappropriateness and folly in using the word 'illegitimate'. That is why he came up with a ready clarification which also did not satisfy many, especially the Congress. Some of the other views recently expressed by him were also not relished by some of his own partymen and several others, including the allies of the BJP. Needless utterances and the controversy created by them have wasted the precious time of the parliament.
We find that both houses of our Parliament spend a lot of time on matters of which are no consequence to the welfare of people. In fact, many times personal egos are becoming more important than any thing else. This is indeed a sorry sate of affairs. Incidentally, our political parties have a long history of disrupting proceedings of Parliament and other houses like Assemblies. All such disruptions cost of lot of money. Both the Congress and BJP are the major culprits of this game of wasting public funds. It is no wonder that good governance takes a back seat in such a situation. It is time people oppose this ugly conduct of political parties.
Advani's assault has hurt him more than it did the UPA govt.The
LEGISLATING members should first maintain the decorum of the house.
Unfortunately 'Much a do about nothing' has become an apt phrase that can very well attributed to both the ruling front and the main opposition in the Indian political scenario.
As evident from its inability to spearhead actions on various critical national issues of urgent nature in a coherent manner, the leadership in the government appears to be a fatigue. Similarly BJP with its recent state of indecisiveness and various actions and inaction and utterances had exposed itself that its leadership is totally in frustrated state of mind. The way BJP had conducted itself in not allowing the smooth functioning the parliament, made itself 'a 'much a do about nothing' party.
Unfortunately, the net effect of BJP and INC trying to politically destroy each other will be both losing their status as National parties causing total instability in the political scenario in the years to come.
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