As the BJP and the Congress hardened their positions on Tuesday, mediation between Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan’s office and the principal Opposition party for the revocation of the suspension of the Congress MPs was taken over by other Opposition parties.
Disturbed by the turn of events, leaders of non-Congress Opposition parties such as the Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh Yadav, the Biju Janata Dal’s Bhartruhari Mahtab and the Trinamool Congress’s Saugata Roy have themselves decided to try and break the logjam in Parliament.
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Leaders of non-Congress Opposition parties decided to mediate between Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan’s office and the principal Opposition party for the revocation of the suspension of the Congress MPs, especially after it was clear that there was now no direct channel of communication between the BJP and the Congress.
Indeed, top BJP sources said that while messages could be sent to Congress president Sonia Gandhi through Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, party vice-president Rahul Gandhi was a different matter.
“The Congress’s parliamentary strategy is being run by Rahul Gandhi, and we have no channels of communication with him. There is no point talking to their parliamentary party leaders as they are not the ones devising floor strategy,” a top BJP leader said.
Meanwhile, the suspension of 25 Congress MPs from the Lok Sabha galvanised the Opposition, instead of dividing it as the government had hoped. The day saw 10 Opposition parties boycott Lok Sabha proceedings as pressure built on the government to intervene for the revocation of the suspension.
Earlier, signalling that the BJP was in no mood to be conciliatory after the Lok Sabha Speaker suspended the Congress MPs for five days, its parliamentary wing passed a resolution against what it termed the Congress’s “obstructionist, narrow and anti-development mindset.”
Congress MPs, too, started the day with a sit-in near the Mahatma Gandhi statue in the Parliament House Complex. Ms. Gandhi, Mr. Gandhi and the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh joined Congress MPs in raising slogans, describing the suspension as a “murder of democracy.”
As an aggressive Ms. Gandhi led the slogan-shouting, the SP and NCP MPs, too, joined the protest. “We will not budge from our stand and there will be no let-up in our pressure as far as issues of corruption, Sushma Swaraj and Vyapam are concerned,” Mr. Gandhi said.
Later, Biju Janata Dal’s Bhartruhari Mahtab spoke to The Hindu but refused to confirm or deny that he was mediating, but did say he was worried that the two principal parties did not have a direct channel of communication. “They should talk to each other, and have some channels of communication open between them,” he said.