The government has indicated that there would be no early adjournment of the Monsoon Session of Parliament, following the week-long logjam there in view of the suspension of 25 Congress MPs by Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.
In fact, apprehending that the government would, in the absence of the Opposition try and clear Bills even in the Rajya Sabha, where its numbers position is precarious, Congress’s chief whip in the Upper House, Satyavrat Chaturvedi, issued a three-line whip to all party MPs to be present in the House.
A senior Minister in the NDA told The Hindu that the session will run its course. “The main issue is that nobody in the Congress is willing to give an undertaking that this placard-waving protest will not be repeated.” Instead, the government not only used the absence of the Opposition to pass some legislation, but also asked Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj to skip the East Asia Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Kuala Lumpur to launch an emotional defence of her actions in the Lalit Modi case. The Congress termed it an attempt at ‘emotional blackmail.’
Ms. Swaraj told the Lok Sabha that she had not interceded with the British on former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi’s behalf.
